Featured Developer: QEA Tech
Background
QEA Tech conducts detailed building envelope audits. We pinpoint and quantify energy leakage through the envelope (e.g., walls, windows, roofs). We use industrial drones to capture thousands of infrared and high-resolution images which are then processed by our patented software. QEA Tech enables building owners/managers to make data driven retrofit decisions and capital plans by calculating:
- energy losses and GHG emissions associated with building envelope elements,
- remediation/upgrade costs for identified issues, and
- projected ROIs of retrofit projects.
Q&A with the Developer
Why did you decide to integrate Thermal Imagining capabilities into your product?
No matter how smart or efficient a building is with its HVAC, up to 80% of energy can be lost through a poor building envelope. Traditionally, there were no practical options to conduct a precise evaluation of the building envelope’s performance. Building managers would have to rely on anecdotal evidence, visual observations or costly, invasive tests that are impractical for large tenanted buildings. QEA Tech’s analysis of thermal images provides a cost effective and convenient way to evaluate the building envelope and quantify its energy loss.
What proved to be the best practice when working with the FLIR Mobile SDK?
FLIR’s SDK is highly comprehensive and accurate while also being easy to use. Its SDK provides all the necessary fundamentals to begin design and product development. Our team of developers benefited from learning about thermography fundamentals in order to harness the power of the SDK. In addition, FLIR’s SDK is the most precise tool available in the market and as a result, we used it as a trusted verification tool when we were developing and refining our own patented software.
What’s the biggest challenge you’ve found working with the FLIR Mobile SDK and how did you get around it?
FLIR offers the most sophisticated thermal tuning software on the market and its SDK is incredibly powerful. Through the resources provided by FLIR, our developers learned how to utilize the full function of the SDK. With FLIR’s SDK, every pixel provides a temperature value which yields a significant amount of data points for our software to process. As a result, our team established an algorithm for identifying pixels of interest to be used in our energy loss calculations.
What did the development and integration of the FLIR Mobile SDK change for you and your product?
FLIR’s SDK is a key component of QEA Tech’s patented software in incorporating factors such as wind speed and moisture to yield accurate surface temperatures. As a result, QEA Tech provides a faster, more convenient service that provides precision analysis, quantification of energy loss, and ROI of repairs. Clients can make data driven decisions for their building envelope based on actual performance. We are also working to enable camera owners/operators at large to submit images to our portal and directly obtain our energy quantification and analysis. As of now, we have audited over 500 buildings worldwide including commercial, residential, industrial, and healthcare facilities and are growing fast.
Visit QEA Tech today for more info!
