DALLAS – April 13, 2005 –Though thermal imaging products don’t always follow Moore’s Law of shrinking size or increasing density, the new Thermal-Eye™ 3600AS from L-3 Communications Infrared Products is an example of a product that has done just that. The new camera core, designed for use in fire, law-enforcement and military applications, is a technology that offers decreased power consumption and increased performance in a smaller, but still cost-effective package. The smaller size of the technology makes it ideal for use in the smallest handheld cameras and hands-free thermal imaging products, which have become increasingly popular in recent months.
“The Thermal-Eye 3600AS is a great example of how our thermal imaging technology continues to become more user friendly and more flexible to meet the needs of those who depend on it for their own safety and the safety of others,” said L-3 Communications Infrared Products President Chris Bade. “The small Thermal-Eye 3600AS core features an extremely high level of performance in a compact size at a very competitive price.”
One of the key elements of the Thermal-Eye 3600AS is its minimal power consumption. The unit can be powered using only two standard AA batteries. This makes it highly accessible to a wide array of users. At the heart of this new product is L-3’s new 30-micron detector. This high performing detector features industry leading sensitivity levels (< 50 mK) for increased scene detail and enables smaller lightweight optics. The electronics alone are nearly 40 percent smaller, allowing thermal imaging capability to occur in new and more effective packaging designs.
The core also features Thermal-Eye Advanced Image Processing technology, which produces detailed images in a variety of disparate scene dynamics and field applications. In addition, L-3 has improved the functionality of the core to enable more camera-level features, such as electronic zoom, polarity, color and custom system tailoring, through an advanced Graphical User Interface (GUI) available to L-3’s OEMs.
“One of the things we’re most committed to is producing thermal imaging technology that is easy to assimilate for our OEMs and more effective for a host of user types,” Bade said. “The low power consumption and high performance capabilities of the Thermal-Eye 3600AS provide the convenience and usability that we believe will help foster increased interest in thermal imaging.”
The Thermal-Eye 3600AS camera cores maintain L-3’s versatile packaging design. The optics and FPA are joined to the electronics with a flexible interconnect, which allows the OEM a multitude of different packaging options. The Thermal-Eye 3600AS camera cores also maintain L-3’s unique offering of customizable “absolute” color capability. Original equipment manufacturers can use this feature to define color set points that correspond to established temperature ranges. In applications such as fire and rescue, high-heat temperatures appear in multiple colors hues, and cooler temperatures appear in gray shades that enable rapid decisions to be made in life or death situations.
L-3 Communications Infrared Products, based in Dallas, designs, manufactures and sells a wide range of thermal imaging products and solutions serving the security, fire and rescue, public safety, law enforcement, transportation, industrial, utilities and Homeland Security markets. Product applications include search and rescue, perimeter surveillance, investigation, industrial process monitoring, preventive maintenance, automotive and truck night vision and much more. Visit www.thermal-eye.com for additional information.