Seek Thermal CT-AAA COMPACT XR-Outdoor Thermal Imaging Camera for Android USB-C

I have to say, Seek makes a high quality product that is built to last for years providing that you keep it in it's case when you are not using it. It's simple to use just download the app from the Google Play Store or from Apple, plug the camera into the USB port grant the permission to use the camera and start taking thermal imaging videos and pictures in seconds. I bought my first one in 2016 then another one in 2017 before buying this one in January 2023. They just get better. They are not cheap but if you need to see a wedding ring in the drain pipe before you take the pipes apart or you need to see inside of the wall or if you want to watch your own heart beat as it happens this is the perfect thing to do it with. There's so many wonderful things that you can use this camera for. If you are using it professionally it will pay for itself the first or second time you use it. It's amazing how many surprising things you can do with it. It's durable, dependable, and easy to use producing high quality pictures and videos. I highly recommend all of the Seek Thermal Imaging Line of Video Cameras. "Pro's trust Seek Thermal Imaging Video Cameras for all their needs and so can you."

To use with OnePlus devices, go to Settings, then System, then turn on "OTG storage". It will turn back off again after 10 minutes of not being used, so you'll need to go do this again every time you want to use the Seek. What are you actually enabling? "OTG storage" really isn't storage, it's simply enabling the phone's USB port to power external devices, which could be an external storage device. Or a thermal camera. Regrettably, I already RMA'd one unit which probably would have worked just fine if I'd have discovered this trick beforehand. I called Amazon Tech Support regarding this issue and they had no fix for it, and did the RMA without my asking for it. That was good customer service to offer to immediately send a new unit, but having just a little bit more information on hand regarding this device would have saved a lot of trouble with the return. The manual which comes with the camera is useless, and it was surprisingly difficult to find the fix for this issue using Google. Outside of this small hack to get it to work with my OnePlus 6, I'm shocked at how well it works. It'll be all I need to find hot (or dead) components in my solar electric systems. One quirk is that in 16:9 ratio the menu options are hidden by the Home buttons, so I had to change the aspect ratio to 4:3 and now the menus all work just fine.

I've tried all the modes, and to be honest, looking at windows (since I was looking for leaks/cold) it's almost impossible to tell that there is a window. I noticed that if I stood in bare feet in one place for a minute, then walked away, I could easily see my warm foot steps, but it's dang impossible to see anything other that huge differences in temps. As an example, wife parker her warm car - it's 14F outside, and in the different modes, from 50 foot, I could see the engine area, but I could not really see anything around it to identify that I'm looking at a car and a hot engine. I expected this to provide some sense of an overlay of the visual image with heat, but not even close. I also went out to my bee hives, because the temp changes automatically, I could not see if the bees were alive or not, as the temp gradient kept changing and there was no way to see if the hive was warmer than the surrounding area, or from one section to another in the hive stack. I will be returning this and I guess I'll end up with a lower pixel resolution to get something reasonable.

I'm impressed by the detail and resolution of the camera. It also doesn't seem to drain my battery very quickly. I think for the price there isn't anything comprable from competitors in terms of specs. Learning to focus took a little bit of practice. I found all sorts of interesting sources of heat as well as heat loss around and outside my house. Note I have the USB c Android edition. It works great with my pixel 3 (although I have to take off the case) but for some reason was not recognized by my OnePlus 3T. Minor gripes: it requires full access to location data for the program to run, it will not even run if you set it to allow location collection "only when the app is running." I installed the app on my iPhone and it will run, with GPS data allowed only when the app is running. Android also notified me that it checked my location in the background randomly in the middle of the day when I had not even run the app that day, so I'm not sure what that's about. I guess you can turn off location privileges every time you stop using the app and then turn it back on next time you want to use it, but really, come on? Also, I guess I have to get a USB port extender. Other than that it's pretty cool to be able to see things that you can't see with your own eyes. Just a reminder for those wanting a magic camera that can see through stuff: this only shows surface temperature, it does not even see through windows, but will give you the temperature of the window glass. Sometimes it can even show you a cool reflection of yourself in the glass as your infrared light is reflected. That being said, if something behind a wall or door is putting off heat and warming up that section of wall, you will see that warmth on the other side.

I've never owned a Thermal Imaging device before so I dont have a solid base for comparison. What I will say is that it seems to work well for being such a tiny unit. The app they want you to download seems to work good. My phone is a Samsung Galaxy A20. I wanted to see how quickly it would register temperature drops, so I scanned back and forth between my wife and the window AC. It seemed to work well and the images were decent. There are still a lot of options I have not messed with yet, but overall I would have to say that I am pleased with this unit. Update 9-21-21 Got to compare this unit to a Thermal Unit my Co-worker bought from the MAC Tool Truck. It performed just as well as the MAC tool did. Degree difference was almost negligible as it was between 0.5 - 1° F difference. We tested both units up close and far. I'm greatly impressed with this unit.

OK, lets admit it, this is at the low end of the consumer grade thermal imagers. There is a reason all the Seek presentations use the Pro model: it has 4x the resolution of this model and has the ability to expand the range of the thermal image palette. This has a huge impact on the usability. I'll revisit the negatives, but the positives are that it does produce acceptable pictures for may uses. My image #1 show a table lamp and a surprising warm digital alarm clock; #2 shows a humidifier. If this fits your need, great, but as you can see its getting harder to distinguish small changes in #2. Hopefully that's where the "expand" feature and the higher resolution will help in the Pro model. Although I haven't tried it, I assume that large scale images of say, a house, will be good enough to find the seasonal heat/cold losses that concern most people. For my needs I want to find smaller differences in a heated floor which this model cannot seem to do. Photo #3 shows the result of a floor image with an overall 10 degree difference (65-75F) after 3-4 seconds. The IMMEDIATE image showed the cooler border that I expected, but washed out on the "next refresh" of the image, never to return. I'm hoping the Pro model range expand and 4xresolution will remedy that as I intend to return this for that version. On a more negative note, unlike more expensive competitors, this does not have an adjustable usb connector. The need for that baffled me until I tried to connect this to my phone with a protector on it. The usb connector did not reach without removing the cover. In addition the connector did not always seat properly and needed some coaxing to connect to the phone. Summary Pros: Its relatively inexpensive and does an adequate job - this is why I give it 3 stars Cons: Low resolution Apparent inability to distinguish small temperature differences USB connector is adequate for an uncovered phone but too short for a cover

So the camera I got initially didn't work. I reached out to customer service and they asked that I send it to them. Yes, that part was a pain. But...once I got the camera back, it was completely worth it. This camera does E-X-A-C-T-L-Y what the company advertises and more. They say it can see however far, a few hounded feet I think, but I can see jets flying in the night sky WELL over a few hundred feet off the ground. It picks up the smallest detail and the resolution is pretty sharp. Long story short, I'm very happy with this product.

I just got the SeekPro directly from amazon and it was supposed to be new but I clearly see the box has been opened and the camera used from the greasy finger prints all over it. But the camera itself is good, It works great of finding hot electronics, Hell I just found a panel with transformer hidden in a wall. The all needs more permissions than it requires, you can turn off some of them. And it will lockup on switching pallets more than a few times. This is the lowest cost IR you can get thats not chinese but it does have app problems.