Why a thermal camera?

Last year I purchased a FLIR One Pro for iOS thermal camera with the intention of identifying areas of our house where we were not thermally efficient. While this provided some insights it didn’t lead to any action items as most of the issues where related to larger budget items (such as replacing glass windows).

The best use of the FLIR camera that I’ve had so far was a local neighbour who thought they had something decomposing in their roof due to the smell in that room, unfortunately the type of insulation in the roof didn’t let them identify the issue visually. Using the thermal camera we were able to look at the ceiling of the room and identify a hot spot of a few degrees where we suspected the issue was located. They were then able to access that specific part of the ceiling and remove the decomposing animal sorting out their issue. It was pretty nifty!

Compatibility with USB-C

The FLIR One Pro is an excellent little device however it does connect via the Lightning port on iPhone/iPad and of course Apple has now moved to USB-C for the iPhone 15 generation so it won’t connect directly anymore.

Apple does sell an adapter on their website “USB-C to Lightning adapter” for AUD $49 which has a male USB-C port on one end and a female Lightning port on the other to allow connecting lightning accessories via USB-C. This was released around the time of the iPhone 15.

I ordered the Apple USB-C to Lightning adapter to test if the FLIR camera would continue to function if I decided to upgrade to a newer iPhone in the future or if people who had newer iPhones wanted to borrow it.

This also got me wondering if this will function with devices other than the iPhone such as Android.

Device	Functional?	Comment
iPad Pro	Yes
Pixel 4a running Android 13	No	Device seems to try to connect but the FLIR camera just makes clicking noises and does not function
Colleague’s Android device (unknown version)	No	Same as the Pixel 4a

### iPad Pro interactions

The iPad Pro worked without issue.

### Pixel 4a interactions

The Pixel 4a was updated to Android 13 & had all possible application updates applied as of 2nd January 2024. It consistently went through the trying to connect screen before failing and retrying.