Flir Systems' night vision on the streets of San Francisco
Auto Tech
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If we humans could see in the infra red spectrum we would have excellent night vision.
fortunately we have technology to solve this problem.
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For tonight's example.
I have the FLIR PathFindIR II, an after market night vision kit for cars.
Installed in our CNet Chevy Aveo here, I have the thermal camera part of the PathFindIR system, this is mounted in front of the grill about two feet off the ground, where they recommend it.
This is a little bit of a rushed install because I've just done a temporary thing here, and there's another very important part.
Of this system, it's in the car.
Let's take a look.
I've run the video cable from the camera to the CPU unit.
This is an important part of the path finder too.
They say mount it inside the cabin and keep it out of the weather.
It's nice and flat, so you can mount it up under the dashboard.
What this part of the system does is, it takes the imagery from the camera.
And, looks for pedestrians or large animals, which it can identify on the monitor.
The imagery is in black and white, but it's also very distinct and it tells you a lot of stuff you can't see with your naked eye through the windshield.
It also draws these yellow boxes around me and any other pedestrians that.
Show up and it's supposed to also put buses around bicyclists but i havent seen it very effective with bicyclists it really doesnt seem to pick them out as well as it does pedestrians, now obviously you aren't going to want to look down at this monitor all the time while you're driving but just a momentary glance down can be very helpful as we've seen the imagery from the pathfinder two is very cool.
And it could also save your life or the life of somebody else out there.
But there are a couple of problems with this system.
One is the cost, $2500, a very expensive addition to any car.
Two is the installation.
It doesn't really fit very well in small cars with that camera mount in the front.
This is really better for a truck or large sedan.
Where this is really gonna pay off is in a rural area where you have large beasts wandering the streets.
And you definitely want to avoid hitting those, and then it could save your life.
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