LPBF Thermal Monitoring

Real-time thermal camera streaming and recording system for LPBF (Laser Powder Bed Fusion) process monitoring.
Developed at WAAM Research by Andrea Rodriguez.

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Overview

This system streams thermal data from an Optris camera connected to a Raspberry Pi to any laptop on the same network. It uses ZeroMQ for low-latency streaming and saves raw data in HDF5 format for post-processing.

Optris Camera → Raspberry Pi (thermal_stream_pi.py) ──ZeroMQ──► Laptop (thermal_viewer_laptop.py)

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Files

File	Runs on	Description
thermal_stream_pi.py	Raspberry Pi	Captures frames via Optris OTC SDK and streams over ZeroMQ PUB
thermal_viewer_laptop.py	Laptop (Win/Mac/Linux)	Receives stream, displays false-color video, records to HDF5

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Requirements

Raspberry Pi

pip install pyzmq numpy
# + Optris OTC SDK (install separately from Optris)

Laptop

pip install pyzmq numpy opencv-python h5py

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Usage

1. Start the stream on the Pi

python3 thermal_stream_pi.py
# or specify port:
python3 thermal_stream_pi.py --port 5555

2. Connect from the laptop

python thermal_viewer_laptop.py --host <PI_IP_ADDRESS> --port 5555

Default Pi IP in the script is 192.168.0.50 — change it with --host or edit PI_IP at the top of the file.

Viewer controls

Key	Action
R	Start recording (saves HDF5)
S	Stop recording
Q	Quit

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Output (HDF5)

Recordings are saved to C:\Users\andre\Downloads\ by default (change with --output).

thermal_YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS.h5
├── thermal_raw      uint16  (n_frames, height, width)
└── timestamp_ms     int64   (n_frames,)   ← Unix milliseconds
attrs: width, height, pi_ip, note

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Network Setup

Both devices must be on the same local network. Find the Pi's IP with:

hostname -I

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Notes

• Frames are dropped (never blocked) if the network is slow — capture integrity is preserved.
• The viewer always displays the newest frame (old frames are discarded on receive).
• Raw uint16 values are Optris-specific counts — apply Optris calibration for real temperatures.