A thermal camera that streams live through your Pixel — Sat 3 Oct 2026 (week 40)

For the ET-SoC-1 rack at Studio 45 (nekko.ai / AIFoundry). You asked on Sat 3 Oct 2026 (week 40) at 17:2x PDT for a camera you can leave mounted, on a Pixel that's on Wi-Fi and charging, so you can "stream it over Wi-Fi to see live thermal imaging". Written on the Intel by ~18:30 PDT. Prices are list prices seen on 3 Oct, so check them before you buy. The earlier research is linked at the bottom.

Updated Sat 3 Oct at 18:5x: you'll stream from Android and write your own software. That makes the pick the Thermal Master P3, not the P2 Pro. The reasons are in "P2 Pro or P3?" below.

Since then: the P3 arrived on Tue 6 Oct and imaged its first card on Fri 9 Oct. Every thermal page is gathered in the thermal camera hub. Where the camera fits behind aifoundry2's card, measured from your 9 Oct photos, is in Friday thermal measurements (Wed 14 Oct).

The answer

Buy the Thermal Master P3, about $299. The InfiRay P2 Pro ($249) is the cheaper alternative; they're compared below.

Until your own Android app exists, the phone runs the camera's app and ScreenStream sends the phone's screen to a web page. Any device on your tailnet then watches the chip heat up, with the app's live temperatures, at http://thermal:8080. One small USB-C hub with charging pass-through charges the phone while the camera is plugged in. The camera goes in a 3D-printed holder on a short clamp arm, and the phone on a second clamp.

Total: about $390–450.

Two things to know before you buy:

1. The vendor app is for watching; your own app can measure. ScreenStream sends a picture of the app: an 8-bit palette that rescales itself. That's fine for watching the chip heat up, and wrong for the millikelvin lock-in runs in your 27 Sep plan. Those need the raw 16-bit frames. Both cameras send them, and your own Android app can read them (next section).
2. The phone is probably your old Pixel 9 Pro XL. Your photos switch from it to the 10 Pro XL in mid-December 2025. Natasha has already reset it and brings it late Sunday evening. It has no magnets, so Google's Pixelsnap charger won't attach to it (Notebookcheck). That's why this setup charges it through the hub. If it turns out to be a Pixel 10, Pixelsnap works too.

P2 Pro or P3? The P3, for your own Android app

People buy the P3 for its lens, not for accuracy. - Both are rated ±2 °C or ±2% of the reading, and both use the same class of 256×192 sensor at 25 Hz. - One reviewer's P3 read a 40 °C blackbody as 39.9–40.0 °C (EEVblog). Nobody has tested the two side by side. - What the P3 adds is a manual-focus lens, sharp from 8 mm to infinity, and a narrower 40° view, which puts more pixels on whatever you aim at. Reviewers single out the focus ring (PCWorld).

For your own Android app:

Verdict: the P3. - It's sharp at both mounting spots. - It puts about twice the pixels on the card from the shelf edge. - It's a little quieter for the lock-in runs. - Your app can drive it without native code. - It's also the camera Edwin recommended and the one your 27 Sep plan was built around.

Pick the P2 Pro instead if you'd rather have a standard webcam that any Linux tool can open, or want to save $50.

How it fits together

 card  <— 20–40 cm —  [P3 in printed holder] — 140 mm arm — clamp on the shelf above
                              |  the extension cable from the P3's box (don't add another)
 wall charger  ——————>  [Anker 332 hub]
                              |  the hub's own short cable
                        [Pixel on its clamp]  — Wi-Fi + Tailscale —>  http://thermal:8080

From the shelf-edge spot, about 37 cm away, the P3's 40° × 30° view covers about 27 × 20 cm at 1.1 mm per pixel, roughly one whole card. The 45 mm package spans about 42 pixels.

Is 20 cm enough? Yes, if the camera looks down from the shelf above

Added Sat 3 Oct 2026 at 18:2x, from your photos of the rigs on Fri 2 Oct (12:49–16:41). The distances are estimates, using the 150 mm-wide EVGA power supplies as a ruler, so allow ±5 cm.

• The camera can't face a card straight on from 20 cm.
• Each ET card stands at the back of its open frame.
• Its back faces the CPU tower cooler, a few cm away.
• A 120 mm fan sits against its heatsink side.
• So the camera looks down. The next shelf is about 35–40 cm above the one the rigs stand on, and the card tops are about 20 cm up. That leaves about 15–20 cm above each card.
• Best spot: the front edge of the shelf above. That's about 35–40 cm from the card, so the image is comfortably sharp.
• It sees the heatsink's top plate with its heat pipe, and the upper part of the card's back.
• The cooler hides the lower part of the back.
• The P3 covers about 27 × 20 cm at 1.1 mm per pixel. The P2 Pro covers about 40 × 30 cm, roughly the whole rig, at 1.6 mm.
• Second choice: directly above the card, under the shelf. That's about 15–20 cm.
• The P3 focuses there easily. For the P2 Pro it's right at the 20 cm limit, so its image is a little soft, though fine for watching.
• Either way, it puts about twice the pixels on the heatsink.
• It's awkward to reach, at the back by the wall.
• To see the whole back of the card, something has to move: the card into a slot farther from the cooler, or the shelf above up a notch (Metro shelves move in 1-inch steps). That's Roman's and Nate's call.
• Tape the heatsink's top plate with Kapton. Bare aluminium reflects like a mirror in the infrared (ε ≈ 0.05), so it reads the room, not the chip. Corrected Wed 14 Oct: 1-mil Kapton lets part of the infrared through and reaches only about 0.62 over bare metal. Use black electrical vinyl (0.96) or matte paint instead; see calibrating the P3.
• A one-minute check at the lab: measure the card top to the shelf above, the card's back to the cooler, and the card to the shelf's front edge.

Setting it up (about an hour)

1. Sunday night, at home: sign the phone in. Install the camera's app (the QR code in the box names it; for the P2 Pro it's "P2 Pro" or "Thermal P2" on Google Play), ScreenStream and Tailscale. In Tailscale's admin console, rename the phone thermal.
2. Settings: - Developer options → Stay awake. - Battery → Unrestricted for all three apps. - Battery health → Charging optimization → Limit to 80%. - Tailscale → Always-on VPN. - Brightness to minimum, always-on display off.
3. Plug in, in this order: charger into the hub, then the hub into the phone, then the camera into the hub. When Android asks whether to open the app for the camera, tick Always.
4. ScreenStream: choose Local (MJPEG) mode, set a PIN, and press Start. Then open http://thermal:8080 on your Mac. If it loads at the phone's Wi-Fi address but not at thermal, look in ScreenStream's settings for an option that limits it to Wi-Fi and turn it off.
5. Aim down from the front edge of the shelf above, at the heatsink's top plate and the upper part of the card's back (Roman suggested the back; the section above explains why only its top shows). Put Kapton on the bare metal, and keep the phone out of the rig's exhaust. With the P3, focus on the card's top edge, then tape the focus ring so a bump can't move it.
6. The test that matters: pull the charger out of the hub and put it back. If the camera doesn't come back by itself within a minute, switch to wireless charging (table below).
7. Label it "IR camera, please don't move — ping Yaroslav", and tell Nate it's there.

For people in the room: the same page works at the phone's address on the studio Wi-Fi. For people off your tailnet: ScreenStream's Global mode (in the Play Store build) gives a link and a password.

The cameras compared

Charging: through the hub or wireless

The extension cable

Use the extension that comes in the camera's box, and don't add a second one. - Leave the P3's USB-A adapter in the box. EEVblog users traced intermittent disconnects to its shallow plug, and the Pixel and the hub take USB-C directly. - USB-C male-to-female extensions fall outside the USB-C spec. - A reviewer found 9 of 10 third-party adapters failed with this camera family (an iPhone-adapter test, but the same lesson). - Your 27 Sep plan also flagged passive extensions past 0.5 m for dropouts.

If the phone has to sit farther away, move the hub and the phone, not the camera. The long cable should be the charger's.

Earlier research on this

1. Sat 3 Oct, the task brief "Order the correct thermal camera": the P2 Pro or TC001, not the P3, with Edwin's E8 as a free first look. That was for a webcam on a lab host; your Android-app plan reverses it (intel · spacesheep).
2. Sat 3 Oct, answered requests §3: why the P3 isn't a webcam (intel · spacesheep).
3. Sun 27 Sep, the thermal-camera experiment plan (written for the P3): where to point it, the clamp-and-arm list, lock-in sensitivity and 20 experiments (spacesheep, public).
4. Wed 30 Sep, the heatsink page: the heatsink stays on, so aim at the heatsink and the back of the board (spacesheep).
5. Fri 2 Oct, the lab brief: the Kapton, the site questions and the mount options (intel · spacesheep).
6. Sun 4 Oct, the Science Night brief: Edwin's FLIR E8 loan and the 11:00 draft to him (intel · spacesheep).

Not yet done: Gmail shows no thermal-camera order as of Sat 17:3x. The 27 Sep plan's ~$190 clamp-and-arm kit was never ordered either. This page's camera mount is the core of it.

Total life satisfaction: this is about $400 and an afternoon. In return, everyone at the lab can watch your chip heat up live, which is concrete progress on the work you've put first.