Smart Thermal Analysis on a Budget: A Hands-on Review of the DytSpectrumOwl Desktop Thermal Analyzer

The ability to see the heat a circuit is generating — before it gets to the point of glowing cherry-red or white-hot — is like a super-power when it comes to fault-finding. Thermal cameras, which capture emitted infrared radiation rather than visible light, are becoming steadily cheaper but higher-resolution hardware still remains well beyond the impulse-purchase level for most makers.

Dianyang Tech is looking to get closer to that price-point with its latest design, though: The DytSpectrumOwl, a desktop thermal camera with clever motorized mount system offering a surprisingly high thermal resolution at a considerable discount over the competition — and cheaper still during its limited crowdfunding campaign.

But can it stand up against industry incumbent FLIR's offerings?

The hardware

• Price: $1,359 ($699 during crowdfunding)
• Resolution: 260×200, 70mK at 25°C (77°F) NETD, 34.4×25.8° FOV
• Refresh Rate: 25 FPS
• Focus: Manual
• Connectivity: USB Type-C
• Measurement Range: -10 to 450°C (14 to 842°F)
• Measurement Accuracy: ±2 per cent to 120°C, ±3 per cent over
• Measurement Range: 20mm to 2m (around 0.8" to 6.6’)

The DytSpectrumOwl is a two-part design, comprised of a camera and a desktop stand. For this review, the camera was supplied with a manual stand with adjustment knobs allowing for manual control of the camera's position with fine-tuning for height from the rubberized test surface.

Those backing the project on Kickstarter, though, will receive something a bit smarter: A motorized stand with automatic height adjustment, linked to the bundled software via USB Type-C cable. A second cable drives the camera itself, which — at launch — is compatible with Windows and Android devices only.

That latter point is a shame: While Windows may still enjoy a majority share on the desktop, you'll find a decent number of macOS and Linux users among the engineers and tinkerers at whom the DytSpectrumOwl is aimed. There is, at least, one saving grace here: The camera shows up as a webcam, allowing basic use with a grayscale color palette on macOS and Linux systems — but without the ability to take temperature readings, view a temperature scale, or manually lock the temperature range.

The camera itself is solidly built, and surprisingly heavy. The body is plain except for a single sticker and a power button, which allows you to disable the camera while leaving the USB cable connected. To the bottom there's a large knurled knob, which adjusts the focus from just under an inch to over six and a half feet — meaning the same camera can be used for extreme close-ups of microelectronics and sweeping a room to check for gaps in insulation.

It's a neat feature, and one that FLIR has been slow to adopt: Its own equivalent to the DytSpectrumOwl, the FLIR ETS320, comes from the factory fixed to a surprisingly short focus point — and while it can, technically, be adjusted, it requires a third-party 3D-printable tool and considerable patience.

The DytSpectrumOwl, by contrast, offers easy focus adjustment: The knob spins smoothly and without excessive pressure, but still manages to fix the focus into place even while you're adjusting the position of the camera.

The software

At the time of this review, the Android app — showcased in the company's crowdfunding campaign — was not ready, leaving only the Windows app to test. The software is quick to install and requires no license key to unlock its features.

Comparing the DytSpectrumOwl software to the FLIR Tools package feels like apples to oranges. Dianyang Tech has put considerable effort into adding features which would appeal to those using the device for circuit analysis, and it shows.

In the default view, the window is split into multiple sections. The biggest portion: A display of whatever the camera can see, presented in one of a surprisingly broad choice of user-selectable color palettes. To the right is a visualization of the palette, showing the current minimum and maximum temperature.

To the button of the window is a section marked "curve analysis," one of the software's most impressive features. Initially, it simply charts the highest temperature visible anywhere in the camera's field of view on a one, five, or ten minute line graph. As you add more reading points to the camera view, though, they appear on the chart — each with its own unique line.

Better still, the chart is not just for show: At the click of a button it's possible to save all the readings to disk as comma separated values (CSV), ready for import into whatever graphing or analysis tool you prefer.

Another fantastic feature comes in what appear at first glance to be drawing tools: Lines, rectangles, hexagons, which you can apply to the thermal image to specify areas to be measured. The line tool is particularly clever, offering continuous readings along its length — great for materials analysis. There's also a zoom feature, which enlarges anything under the cursor, and the ability to trigger alerts based on high temperatures — and to have an alert fire off a still image capture or video recording.

There's also a second camera view, marked "3D." In this, the image is displayed at an angle and with an artificial height provided by the thermal data: The hotter a section of the image, the taller it appears. It's a neat trick, but the actual benefit delivered is questionable: It can make at-a-glance hot-spot finding easier, but if there's a particularly hot section towards the front of the image it can block your view of sections behind.

Everything in the view is customizable: You can drag, close, open, and resize sub-windows within the main window as much as you like. You can also save the layout, once you're happy — and choose from a small number of predefined layouts, each created with a particular task in mind.

Compatibility

The software, as you would expect, allows you to capture still images as what Dianyang Tech describes as "radiometric JPEGs." The only trouble: They're not radiometric JPEGs, or at least not the standard type of radiometric JPEG.

In a traditional radiometric JPEG, as saved by FLIR cameras and the bulk of its competitors, there are two data sections. The first section holds an interpreted view of the data, with the user's chosen color palette applied and a thermal scale overlaid for reference alongside any measurement spots that were picked prior to the capture; the second section holds the raw data from the thermal camera itself, which can be extracted from the image for further processing or to measure new spots.

The JPEG images saved by the DytSpectrumOwl have the former, though annoyingly while measurement spots and shapes are included the thermal scale is not, but the latter is locked away in a proprietary format. No software for working with radiometric JPEGs will load the thermal data from a DytSpectrumOwl image, dramatically cutting its usability for more detailed post-capture analysis — and the CSV export function isn't a reasonable replacement.

For those using the camera for live-view analysis, it's no problem — though the inability to save an image with the scale overlaid is a bizarre omission. Dianyang Tech has also promised that its own analysis software will support loading of its custom radiometric JPEGs for later analysis, to follow in a future update. It does, however, appear as a definite black mark on what is otherwise an impressively-featured system.

Conclusion

At a little under $1,400 the DytSpectrumOwl isn't cheap — until you compare it to FLIR's equivalent, the ETS320, which costs $2,499. Granted, that extra cash gets you a range of upgrades — a built-in battery and display for wire-free use away from your desktop or laptop, a higher thermal resolution, and the ability to save true radiometric JPEGs — but the ETS320 lacks the promised Android compatibility and ease of focus adjustment found in the DytSpectrumOwl.

A few of the enhanced features promised by Dianyang Tech weren't available in time for this review, however. It remains to be seen just how slick the automatic adjustment of the motorized stand really is, and while video demos of the Android application look smooth it was not provided for testing.

For anyone looking to step up from a handheld or phone-connected low-resolution thermal camera, though, the DytSpectrumOwl is certainly worth considering — and at the crowdfunding price of $699, it's a downright bargain.

The DytSpectrumOwl is available to back on Kickstarter for the next three days at the reduced $699 price; after this, it will be available direct from Dianyang Tech at $1,359.