Budget-Friendly Acoustic Imager

I recently saw an ad for the Fluke II910 Acoustic Imager, marketed largely as a fast way to pinpoint air leaks.

Air leaks and many other phenomenon are either very quiet and hard to detect with human ears, or in the ultrasonic frequency ranges that we can’t detect at all even when the amplitude is high.

Essentially, much like a modern thermal imager that has a visible light camera and an array of non-contact thermometers that can be merged into a “fusion” image, this sonic imager has a visible camera and an array of microphones which can measure the sound emitted, determine direction and plot the intensity of the noise source as colour coding of the area on the visible light camera image in realtime.

I’m in love with the potential of this thing, but not the briefcase size of it, nor the $30,000 price tag.

So, I’m gonna make my own.