Basic Operation - FLIR FC-Series T Installation Manual

2

Basic Operation

2 Basic Operation
When power is applied to the FC-Series camera, a FLIR splash screen is displayed for less than two
seconds, and then the camera outputs the live video image. No operator action or intervention is
required - "power in, video out". No configuration of the camera is necessary.
Splash Screen
The thermal camera makes an image based on temperature differences. In the thermal image, the
hottest item in the scene appears as white and the coldest item is black, and all other items are
represented as a grey scale value between white and black.
It may take some time to get used to he thermal imagery from the camera, especially for someone who
only has experience with normal daylight cameras. Having a basic understanding of the differences
between thermal and daylight cameras can help with getting the best performance from the thermal
camera.
Both thermal and daylight cameras have detectors (pixels) that detect energy. One difference between
thermal and daylight cameras has to do with where the energy comes from to create an image. When
viewing an image with an ordinary camera, there has to be some source of visible light (something hot,
such as the sun or lights) that reflects off the objects in the scene to the camera. The same is true with
human eyesight; the vast majority of what people see is based on reflected light energy.
On the other hand, the thermal camera detects energy that is directly radiated from objects in the
scene. Most objects in typical surroundings are not hot enough to radiate visible light, but they easily
radiate the type of infrared energy that the thermal camera can detect. Even very cold objects, like ice
and snow, radiate this type of energy.
The camera is capable of sensing very small temperature differences, and produces a video image that
typically has dramatic contrast in comparison to daylight cameras. This high contrast level from the
thermal video enables intelligent video analytics software to perform more reliably.
427-0070-11-12, version 100 April 2012 2-1