Electronics repair with a Thermal Camera

In this video I demonstrate how I use a thermal camera to fault find on electronic circuit boards.

[@twobob]

ah thousands of volts. The only real "definitive" teacher.

[@RichardsWorld]

Tough choice, risk fingers or buy a thermal camera 😀 On another channel a guy hooked up the motherboard to his power supply, then he found hot components with 99% isopropyl alcohol. He put the alcohol on the suspected components and the hot one made the alcohol evaporate very quickly.

[@eilizezila4650]

i saw a guy on electronic repair channel use some lighter fluid, the surface tension change with the rise in temp, so he can find sometimes some faulty think on the board but with a thermal cam, you can see all the board, you can use it to "watch" a electrical cabinet to make the repair you see immediately short circuit and so on and you can see itermittent fault

[@jontait1095]

Great video

[@michaelcruz2994]

Great video, thanks for sharing

[@panedole]

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[@Internutt2023]

Thank you for a good overview of troubleshooting with that camera. One thing i will comment on is, you advised people to not use it for devices with "mains" or high volage in them, but I think it would be just as useful there, especially because it reduces peoples "urge" to touch things physically to check temperatures when troubleshooting, and people who do work on any items with mains voltage in them should be aware to fully depower it and drain off any capacitors that may be holding a residual voltage before going to work.

[@JerryWalker001]

I think you should watch the video again as I say the exact opposite of what you say. My entire point was to NOT touch mains powered (or hot) components to see if they were hot and that a thermal camera is very useful for this purpose. Using a thermal camera it makes no difference what voltage is on the component as the thermal camera is 'non contact'.

[@jackjustice9452]

Instablaster.

[@sean1185]

😶

[@mymessylab]

🙏thanks

[@SURGE101]

Could you use that camera for iPhone boards

[@zabidi59]

Do like to share this informative video please.

[@jeffwoo4353]

Thank you for sharing. May I know what brand and model of the thermal camera that you are using? What is the resolution?

[@nylesnguyen3797]

Thats a flir tg165

[@chinmayeemahato3495]

Can be read hardisk data from satalite

[@antigen4]

i would assume any chip reading the same as ambient should be considered dead and should be replaced?

[@JerryWalker001]

Most devices will show as ambient because the energy they produce is very low and so is dissipated in the board and surrounding parts. Devices which produce enough power to overcome the rate of dissipation will show as being above ambient but that does not really mean that they are faulty. Unfortunately it is more a matter of looking for any devices which do not show the expected heating which are suspect. For example 1 of 8 memory chips that gets hotter than the other 7 could be suspect (or it could be driving a faulty device or being driven incorrectly). The same if one is cooler than the others. It is of course possible that 7 of the 8 are faulty.

[@ricardoferreira2811]

There are other methods like fingers, IPA, lighter fluid, or even candle wax. Of course a thermal camera is the best but it comes with a price.

[@ArthurTugwell]

Which model Flir you using please?

[@JerryWalker001]

Its a TG165 although this is now fairly old so has probably been replaced with a newer model.

[@ArthurTugwell]

@@JerryWalker001 thank you Jerry for such a fast reply you top bloke. Subscribed!

[@glenslick2774]

You're an expert on thermocouples. If you didn't have a thermal camera is there a reasonable way to use a thermocouple mounted on some sort of wand probe to move from IC to IC for something similar to what you did here, although I suppose much slower and more labor intensive. Or would that not really be practical or effective?

[@JerryWalker001]

Interesting idea but unless a component was really getting hot then it would not really be practical. The temperature differentials we saw on the thermal camera were only around 0.5C between the working IC's and the faulty one and the thermocouple is only a point contact sensor so would not easily be able to detect the difference. Also the temperatures are constantly changing and we are looking for differences across the board so you would have to be able to measure many points very accurately and very quickly for it to be any use. Without a camera I would simply use a finger. I do sometimes use thermocouples when developing equipment to monitor component temperatures but that is for a different reason. Having said all that if you know what temperature a component is limited to then you could use a thermocouple to check it but that would be a fairly rare thing.

[@jackrubin]

Harbor Freight (no idea if there is a UK equivalent) has a range of "infrared laser thermometers" that cost as little as $25. They don't do actual imaging like the Flir but have a flying spot laser pointer that makes it pretty easy to find hotspots on a board. AT the price, you can't afford not to buy one.

[@JerryWalker001]

They have the same problem. Not very accurate and you would have to take lots of accurate temperatures in a short time. IR sensors are not very good for making absolute temperature readings because they are affected by the emisivity of the surface they are pointed at and you can end up reading temperatures of things behind you instead of what you are pointing it at. The advantage of an imaging camera when you limit the temperature range in the field of view to just a few degrees is that you get a very good snap shot of the (many) temperature differences across the board which is what you need rather than the absolute temperature of a few points across the board. However as with thermocouples they may be useful for discrete measurements although I would not use them for instrumentation.

[@chinmayeemahato3495]

If not encrypted harddisk

[@jontait1095]

Use zippo lighter fluid if you dont have thermal cam not fingers!!!

[@aicisha]

Finger, thermal camera... Why complicate things that much? You can use a dmm with a thermocouple to probe around. Still nice informative video, thanks!

[@oscaremoralesp28]

Because time is money

[@aicisha]

@@oscaremoralesp28 hmm.. I don't think time matters when you enjoy doing electronics as a hobby

[@harbselectronicslab3551]

when I was 9 I burned my finger trying to set the neighbours cats tail on fire................

[@jontait1095]

You could use your tongue that's what I do