Sandrine 2, FLIR Voyager (outmoded!)
Binoculars, sminoculars! Open the bigger image to get a hint of how well Sandrine’s FLIR Voyager multi-camera system is bringing in the little tower on Mt. Battie (from which I took Panbo’s header photo). Live in person you could easily watch the tourists climbing around, and we didn’t have it totally zoomed in. But, egads, on Oct. 1 FLIR will offer a Voyager II model with some must-have features. For one thing, it will input radar cursor data and thus automatically hone in on selected targets, which could be very valuable, I think. It will also have an IP address, and thus will be remote controllable from any computer on the yacht or beyond, which could be fun.
Note, though, that there are camera tracking tricks that Voyager still won’t do, and that I kid about “outmoded.” It doesn’t say in the press release, but this sounds like an upgrade that can be retrofit to original Voyagers easily. Besides, sometimes outmoded is the way to go. Sandrine, for instance, has not yet upgraded from Nobeltec Admiral 9.0 to Max Pro, even though it’s free (that’s Admiral on the middle screen above with N2KView, as discussed yesterday, to the right). I suspect they’re cautiously awaiting the first service pack, which actually just appeared (and has encouraged me to spend more time with Max, which you’ll hear about next week). Finally, has any eagle eye noticed that the tower is right of the head-sail in reality but left of it on the FLIR screen? That’s because the camera up in the antenna farm has a slightly different point of view.
Maybe I’m missing the point, but that level of zoom would be unusable at sea.
Geoff, this is a gyro stabilized camera system on a 120′ heavy displacement yacht. I dare say there are some sea conditions and zoom levels that don’t work (or make you sick to see), but a lot that will.
I would appreciate a clarification by the manufacturer of the exportability (and thus, the international supportability) of this highly-capable commercial IR system. For an investment of this magnitude (how much, $$$, by the way), one would want to be able to freely cruise without US Government administrative hassles, and if maintenance or an exchange box is ever needed, to be able to ship replacement LRUs without export restrictions.
@Larry:
FLIR’s commercial vision systems division has offices in Bejing, China, and Breda, The Netherlands. I also know that they have a support department in the Netherlands. I don’t think they’d go to that trouble if they couldn’t ship product!
$$$ wise I believe it starts at $4k-ish, but for that money you ‘only’ get the low light level capability, no stabilization or zooming.