I thought those cheap thermal cameras for phones were a total joke... until I found a short on a board in under 2 minutes.

For a while, I figured the $200 phone attachment thermal cams were just toys. Then a job in Austin had me tracing a weird voltage drop in a complex media panel. I borrowed one from another tech on site, and it lit up a hot spot on a power supply board almost right away. It was a tiny short I would have spent hours hunting with a meter. Has anyone else found a good use for these on regular install calls?

3 comments

3 Comments

elliotl242mo ago

My shop in Houston tried one for a month. It was useless for anything not already smoking hot. You still need a meter to confirm the actual fault. I'd rather trust solid probe work than a blurry heat blob.

the_fiona2mo ago

Totally get that, they're just another tool in the box.

wade_hall7d ago

Well heck, that's a fair point about the blurry blobs... but I think folks are missing the real trick with thermal cameras. They're not for finding the exact bad wire, they're for finding the circuit that's acting up before you even touch a meter. I had a buddy who used one on a big commercial panel and spotted a hot bus bar connection that wasn't even smoking yet, just a few degrees warmer than its neighbor. Saved him hours of poking around blind.