Seek Thermal turns your iPhone into a thermographic camera - 9to5Mac (2024)

There’s no shortage of camera accessories for the iPhone these days withinterchangeable mount lensesand countless apps for mastering smartphone photography, and now you can buy Seek Thermal’s smartphoneattachment to transform your iPhone into an actual thermographic camera. Seek Thermal is a thermal camera with a true thermal sensor that connects to your iPhone through theLightning connectionwith a chalcogenide lens and vanadium oxide microbolometer. What does all of that mean? Your iPhone can detect heat and energy through darkness andphysical surfaces, and not with fake filters or trickery.

The Seek Thermal camera attachment is an actual infrared camera that reads light past the visible light spectrum. Here’s how Seek Thermal describes the accessory:

You can now have the power to see the unseen. This true thermal imaging camera detects infrared light that all objects emit, and uses the data from over 32,000 thermal pixels to create a visible image on your iPhone. In broad daylight or complete darkness, you can now be aware of your surroundings. The possibilities are endless.

Aside from the novelty of owning a thermal camera that interfaces with your iPhone, Seek Thermal describes a few practical use cases:

Safety and Security: Scan a dark parking lot before heading to your car; scan the yard before investigating strange noises.

Home Improvement: Identify leaky windows and doors, insufficient insulation, and other sources of energy loss; trace water damage up a wall or across a ceiling to its source; and identify the location of clogs in pipes.

Pet Owners: Scan the yard for predators before letting your dog out at night; find your dog or cat in the dark.

Cooking: Measure the heat distribution across your BBQ or griddle; instantly measure the surface temperature of food; detect the propane level in your tank.

Boating: Detect and locate objects on the water at night.

For iPhonographers and gadget enthusiasts, the price point of the Seek Thermal camera is also interesting. Rather than requiring thousands of dollars for getting into the thermal camera game, Seek Thermal transforms your iPhone into a thermographic cam for $199. That’s cheaper than a similar accessory in the form of an iPhone 5 case we saw at CES this year.

The company is also inviting developers to request access to Seek Thermal’s developer kit for making apps that take advantage of the cam.

The device works with iPhone 5 and up (including the new iPhone 6 models), the company says, and can be used with iPad mini/iPad 4 and up as well. Seek Thermal can be bought from the company’s online store and is expected on Amazon as well.