Help with the CGOET thermal camera

[Griffinaerialphotos]

Hello everyone. I’m new to this so please bare with me. I dipped my toe into the thermal camera arena. I didn’t want to go bankrupt and go for the best Flir camera so I bought the CGOET for my typhoon h. On my first flight I got some still images of my pool and house. Here’s my question. The sd card on the camera has a jpg of the low light camera that’s really good quality. Then the same picture in jpg of the thermal but it’s very low quality. Very small and if I try and enlarge it to compare the two photos it really distorts the image. Then it has a tif file that I can’t read. Now I’ve done a little reading on here and someone said that the controller will have a mkv file of the thermal image that’s a better quality. How do I get that picture? I’ve got all Mac equipment. MacBook and iPad and iPhone. I understand that the CGOET isn’t the best out there but was hoping for a bit better than a very small picture. I also understand that I’m a newby to yuneec and haven’t given a lot of information, but could someone please point me in the right direction.
Thanks

 

[JD Flyer]

Hello - you're in the right place! I"m a solar inspector, seriously interested in that camera. It will be interesting to hear what the group has for you. That said - I personally can do very little but be envious - I have camera envy ... I've got the TH480, and really like it. Please, let me know how your pics are. I'm imagining you'll do a decent amount of low and slow photogrammetry.
John D
SE Michigan

 

[G Saunders]

The CGO-ET is a low-resolution thermal camera, 160X120, which is why it's inexpensive. It works fine for some applications. But, to get higher resolution thermal images costs $5,000+++. The new EVO 2 with 640X512 thermal resolution is upwards of $10,000. The Mavic 2 Dual is low-resolution like the CGO-ET, is $3,300 for the drone and built-in sensor.

The compromise is to make the themal image or video somewhat transparent and overlay it onto the low-light image so you can see the details in the higher resolution visible image and thermal data over it.

I posted a workflow for getting the visible and thermal imagery out of the video with a PC and combining them. It got a couple upvotes:

CGO-ET

Does anyone know where I can find an instructional video or materials for the CGO-ET camera? What they provide is very limited.

yuneecpilots.com

AFAIK, the imagery stored on the ST16 is no better than what's on the SDCard from the drone.

 

[Griffinaerialphotos]

Thanks. I’ve been working with it and some editing software for the pas 24 hours. I came up with something that makes me happy even with the low resolution thermals. Let me know why you all think.
thanks again.

 

[G Saunders]

I think you got it the best it can be with the CGO-ET rig...

 

[JD Flyer]

That's really impressive, joining the visible and thermal. I'd love to see that done to a house with solar panels, during the day. Is that using the method G Sanders posted above ?

 

[G Saunders]

That's really impressive, joining the visible and thermal. I'd love to see that done to a house with solar panels, during the day. Is that using the method G Sanders posted above ?

I think the image posted is a photo, not a video, and what I posted was for splitting the thermal video from the vlow-light video from the SD card so it can be treated like Griffin Arial did with the photos.

The CGO-ET puts the thermal and visible video on the same 'two-track' file and Windows users need to use the tricks I've posted to split them out. I think the video editor on a Mac is able to deal with multi-track video, but my Camtasia can't get to the thermal image so tools like VLCPlayer or mkvToolnix or are needed to get the two files ready for the compositor.

The technique's the same for photos and videos, use a capable photo or video editor, make the thermal image about 50% transparent, and lay it over the visible light.

 

[Ben H]

Thanks. I’ve been working with it and some editing software for the pas 24 hours. I came up with something that makes me happy even with the low resolution thermals. Let me know why you all think.
thanks again.View attachment 21318

Hello, I would like to find out more about what software you are using? Is this the video or picture which is usually very poor quality and low resolution when trying to download a file. I have been trying to find out how to make the quality better like you have on the display. Please let me know how you edit the camera.
thank you

 

[G Saunders]

For the photos there's no extra tools required but a capable photo editor like GIMP or PhotoShop. For photos the CGO-ET writes separate low-resolution thermal and higher-resolution visible images to the SD card so it's easy to flat the thermal image on a semi-transparent layer above the visible light image.

For videos, the CGO-ET writes a single file with multi tracks. Some Windows video editors can't split the multiple tracks, but the free apps VLCPlayer and MKVToolnix will.

It's a tortured workflow, but gets good results, like Griffin did with this roof.

The Typhoon has got to go really, really slow in video mode, where the thermal sensor is really sluggish and lags way behind any quick moves...