FLIR TCX series, Instruction Manual

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Thermal Imaging Overview
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The Tri-Mode IP/MPX/Analog Thermal camera is a state-of-the-art thermal imaging de-
vice that will provide excellent night visibility and situational awareness without any form
of natural or artificial illumination. The sensors do not produce images from visible light
like an ordinary camera or the human eye does. Thermal cameras use energy in the in-
frared band to produce images by sensing subtle differences in temperature and gener-
ating images based on those differences.
By using a thermal camera, you are viewing heat, not light. If there is a person in the live
view image, you can see there is a person, but identifying who that person is may be im-
possible regardless of the resolution of your thermal sensor. Similarly, while a higher res-
olution sensor will detect a person at a greater distance, a low resolution sensor in many
cases will still detect the same motion.
The thermal imaging sensor relies on the fact that all objects, even very cold objects like
ice, emit thermal energy in the portion of the spectrum that the sensor can detect, the
long wave infrared (LWIR). Therefore, unlike a visible-light camera, the thermal imaging
sensor produces images based on directly radiated rather than reflected energy.
Any scene displayed by the sensor contains a range of thermal energy (temperatures),
from the lowest to the highest, that is present in the scene. These temperatures are
grouped by the sensor into a maximum of 256 “shades of gray” based on the thermal im-
age processing settings. Since the TCX Series camera is sensitive enough to distinguish
many more than 256 different temperatures, each “shade of gray” will represent a range
of temperatures.
For example, in a simplistic case, an image comprised of 60% sky (very cold) will devote
60% of the available “shades of gray” to the sky, leaving only 40% for the remainder of
the image. The temperature range assigned to each “shade of gray” is controlled by the
choices in the Camera Settings menu or the MPX on-screen display (OSD).
FLIR Systems, Inc. offers a comprehensive selection of training courses to help you to
get the best performance and value from your TCX Series cameras. You can find out
more at
www.flir.com/training .
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