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A comment on Homemade thermal camera. Parent comment

Re:Homemade thermal camera by icegreentea on Sunday October 14, 2012 @12:47PM (#4651813)
Actively cooled IR sensors can achieve higher resolution and accuracy, but ambient temperature IR sensors have been around for a while. As long as the incident IR can drive the sensor element away from ambient temperature, then you can have sensing.
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Re:Homemade thermal camera by klodolph on Sunday October 14, 2012 @11:08PM (#4653556)
IR sensors don't work by detecting heat changes. They convert infrared photons directly to electrical current.

Now I don't actually know jack about IR sensors, but I would assume that increased temperature means increased noise, as it does with visible-light CCDs. People refrigerate visible-light CCDs too, for taking low-noise astronomical photos.

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