SENSE THE HEAT

NOW SMARTPHONES CAN SENSE HEAT AND CLICK THERMAL IMAGES

The phrase “sixth sense” used to mean clairvoyance — you had a premonition or intuition which went beyond senses like sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch. Now, it is being used for something as sensory as heat or warmth.

The world’s leading maker of thermal sensors, FLIR (Forward Looking Infra Red), calls itself the world’s Sixth Sense. Its product lists night vision and infra red devices for military and civilian use, includes a $99 — $199 consumer range — attachments that convert a smartphone into a thermal sensor.

CAT — maker of rugged personal devices and part of the Caterpillar group, better known for earth moving machines, has brought a smart phone to India — the CAT S60, that is the world’s first mobile handset with an integrated FLIR infra red camera.

Remember VIBGYOR, the seven-coloured spectrum of visible light, from violet to red? Beyond red, lies Infra Red or IR . To ‘look’ at the IR part of the electromagnetic spectrum, one has to measure heat, not light. IR cameras are routinely used by field professionals — electricians to scan the wiring behind walls to detect leaks or breaks; health workers to scan a crowd of people to see who has fever (you may have unknowingly passed an IR scanner upon entering foreign airports where these days they are looking out for travellers with H1N1 or other infections); firefighter use them to see through the smoke. Wild life lovers use them to track wild animals without disturbing them and law enforcement agencies use IR cameras to detect human activity in pitch darkness.

With outdoor use in mind, CAT S60 is dust-proof and drop-proof to military standards — from up to 1.8 metres and can be used for underwater photography below five metres of water for one hour. Every opening in the camera has a covering, making it waterproof and it can be operated with wet fingers or with gloves on.

Phone-wise, it is 4G LTEready with 3 GB of RAM and 64 GB of storage expandable by another 128 GB. The screen is 720p HD, 4.7 inch, with 5 MP front camera and 13 MP rear camera with flash and autofocus. The battery is 3,800 mAh — good for a full day. The additional rear fitting is the FLIR infrared camera. The control to operate it is right there among the apps in the opening menu. You can select still, movie, panorama or time lapse mode and there are options like shooting the same scene in IR and normal, then super imposing them. As you point the FLIR camera, it displays temperatures in different parts of the frame.

This is not a phone for the average customer, but for a wide spectrum of professional hikers and outdoor users. The cost is `64,999, which is about the same as a high-end standard smartphone — but for those who can creatively exploit IR, this is a hugely convenient tool. Now, in the phone arena, we can say that “hot air is blowing in the wind!”

Priced at `64,999, the phone can be used by a wide spectrum of professionals — mainly by hikers and outdoor users