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Process monitoring

Thermal Video and Chemical Analysis on One Timeline

Software that runs a near-infrared analyzer and records thermal video of a high-temperature mixing process, with both kept in sync.

The problem

A high-temperature mixing process needed to be watched two ways at once: chemically, through a near-infrared (NIR) analyzer, and thermally, through a FLIR A320 infrared camera. The analyzer results and the thermal video had to line up in time, so the team could see what the process was doing at any moment. And it had to be done on a modest budget.

What we built

  • Analyzer control: the NIR analyzer used its own communication protocol. A set of LabVIEW wrappers let the application start scans, retrieve results, and run analyses remotely.
  • Thermal video recording: rather than buy a commercial video package, we used an open-source video library to pull the camera’s live stream and save it to disk as MPEG-4, time-aligned with the analyzer results.
  • Peak temperature feedback: peak temperature was key to controlling the process. The application queries the camera directly over the network for the current peak and acts on it as the process runs.

The result

Operators see the running temperature, the recording status, and the analyzer results on one screen. Recorded video and chemical results can be reviewed side by side afterward. Using open-source tools for the video kept the cost down without giving up capability.

LabVIEW front panel with a running temperature chart, video recording status, and a table of NIR analyzer results
One screen for temperature, video recording, and analyzer results.
Two thermal video windows showing measurement boxes with maximum and minimum temperatures and a color temperature scale
Live thermal video, with temperatures read inside a measurement box.