Featured Product in the Wild: Using the FLIR Lepton 3.5 for Art
What product was used?
- DIY-Thermocam PCB v1
- FLIR Lepton Breakout Board V2.0
- FLIR Lepton 3.5
Who is using this tech?
(Left: Montgomery has led many artistic ventures, including "Neighborhood Public Radio." Right: His works has been featured around the world, and are based in Albuquerque, New Mexico - USA)
Lee Montgomery is an associate professor of Electronic Art in the Art Department at the University of New Mexico.
Montgomery pursues DIY approaches to technology and has utilized different technologies for his art including analog and digital video, glitch, circuit bending, drones, and other various forms of wireless transmission. His work ( including “Transformers Transformed", “Stupidity Tax UK”, and more) has been displayed in various museums and venues, nationally and internationally.
Why are they using this tech?
Montgomery started working with Lepton Sensors back in 2016, with a random purchase from Sparkfun electronics. After figuring out how to interface with a Raspberry Pi, he started pursuing a method of making the sensor more portable. After numerous near misses in mounting a Raspberry Pi into a Polaroid Land Camera he discovered the DIY thermocam: https://www.diy-thermocam.net through GroupGets where he’s been getting thermal parts ever since.
Now he has the DIY Thermocam board inside a Polaroid Land Camera, and is looking forward to exploring a number of aesthetic possibilities for thermal vision.
Using a DIY thermocam board with a Lepton 3.5 sensor installed into his thrift store Polaroid Land Camera he creates multiple portraits which are then interpreted with the different, radiometric filters to get the best aesthetic result.
Selfie #1, 2022
Warmed Cheeks, 2022
Misidentified #1, 2022
Hotheaded Chickens #1, 2022
You can follow some of the work he is doing and has done with FLIR Lepton thermal sensors both in still images and video dating back to pre-pandemic days on his website: http://www.lee-web.net/thermal-camera-works/