Just burned $80 on a thermal camera for finding hot breakers

Bought one of those cheap phone attachment thermal cameras off Amazon thinking I'd spot overloaded circuits like a pro. Turns out it couldn't read through a junction box and gave me false readings on every panel I checked. Anybody else get tricked by these things?

2 comments

2 Comments

sandra14618d agoMost Upvoted

Well congrats, you just paid $80 to learn that thermal cameras are great at finding ghosts in your walls but not so much actual electrical problems. Guess the only breaker you blew was your wallet.

noah_black18d ago

Man did your buddy ever fall for this same thing? My friend thought he was gonna be some hotshot electrician and spent a whole afternoon pointing that thing at every outlet in his house, just to find out his fridge was warm and nothing else. He figured out the hard way those cheap cameras are basically toys for looking at water pipes, not real electrical work.