Footprints: A $10 Thermal Infrared Imager
A low-resolution thermal camera with competitive sensitivity (0.13 K NETD) at very low cost. Easily built from scratch—it requires no special parts, except a screen-printed sheet of pyroelectric PVDF polymer (as used in automatic porch lights) and a moulded polyethylene Fresnel lens. This camera achieves a cost reduction of 2 orders of magnitude ($10 vs $1000) over the next cheapest, which is a 256-pixel PZT array from Irisys, while maintaining very good sensitivity. These are from a project called Footprints.
The design is simple: screen-printed carbon ink on a free-standing film of PVDF polymer, with a multiplexer made out of ordinary display LEDs with a few interesting optical and electronic hacks, as shown in these photos.