MAPPING OF THERMAL EMISSIVITY OF PYLON USING THERMAL SMARTPHONE

Muhammad Afiq Bin Zairani, Dr Jasmee Bin Jaafar, Dr Khairul Nizam

Centre of Studies for Surveying Science and Geomatics, Faculty of Architecture, Planning and Surveying, Universiti Teknologi
MARA, 40450 Shah Alam, Selangor Darul Ehsan, MALAYSIA

KEY WORDS: GIS, APPS, TM, NB,

ABSTRACT

At present, maintenance of pylon was calibrated manually that need the technician climb each shaft and check every single bolt on it.
These conventional using pen and paper incurred time and costly. Also, the usual thermal camera that used for monitoring the
condition of the pylon is significant and not consistent. In this study, a thermal phone will be utilised for the shaft maintenance
purpose. By using the thermal smartphone with the help of application architecture, the data collection can be done by using this
technology. Apps for the thermal image capture will be developed with extra function such as sync with a database for better and
faster data collection. All the information captured by the apps on this phone will be automatically synced to a server on the fly far
better than the conventional method. From the server, the data that we collected from the field will be processed and analyse for the
condition of the shaft. Any failure that we detect from the thermal image of the pylon during the analysis will be sent directly to the
technician with useful information such as location, description, and where the thermal hotspot of the shaft.

1. INTRODUCTION

In Malaysia, our primary source of electrical power supply

comes from TNB (Tenaga Nasional Berhad) that started since
1949 originally known as Lembaga Lektrik Pusat (Central
Electricity Board). CEB at that time owned a total of 34 power
station in Malaysia such as steam power plant, hydroelectric
power plant and various diesel power generators. By years
many developments have been done by TNB to maintain the
humans need, socioeconomic and daily life. Many electrical
substations have been established since TNB started as the
primary source energy in Malaysia.

Eventually, to monitor the power substation that continuously

being developed, it is crucial to find a method to maintain these
electrical substations because if one of the substation
malfunction will be affected to some area and human need
significantly. As technology are constantly evolving and giving
us an easy way and multiple methods to maintain the electrical
substation. The thermal camera also known as the
thermographic camera can detect infrared energy (heat) and
convert it into an electronic signal which is to produce the
thermal image that we can calculate the temperature. This
instrument is can used for monitoring any sign of abnormal
heat.

The thermal camera is proposed to detect any electrical stress in

the substation (pylon). Any sign of high temperature to the
substation can be monitored. Also, any stress on the power
substation can be detected earlier before any maintenance work
can be done and can alert the potential problems. Figure 1: Pipeline Research

2. METHODOLOGY In the preliminaries stage, many aspects need to do some

research. In this phase, will focus mainly on data collection
The methodology in figure 1 below is the general idea of this standard of the procedure from scratch.
research structure works. It will describe the process and
analysis method that taken to get the result.
 a. Preliminary Study b. Hardware Calibration

During the preliminary study, focus on finding the best
method to collect pylon data is using a thermal camera. In
this study, the data collection will be using CATS60 mobile
phone which will capture the thermal image of the pylon.
Each pylon structure gets its rotation. Before capturing the
image, the heading of the tower must be identified. The pylon
heading identifies as Figure 2 below. In this research, all side
of the pylon was captured. As Figure 2, there is four (4) side
of pylon station which north (N) is the heading, south (S),
east (E) and west (W).
Before we start collecting data, we need to calibrate the
thermal camera first to ensure the data given are accurate. We
begin to calibrate our thermal image by using an old method
which is reading the heat of boiling water. As we know the
exact of boiling water that turns into vapour is 100 Celsius.
We start to take the picture of the item to see the temperature
to calibrate the thermal camera as shown in figure 3.

S N S N

Pylon Pylon
A Figure 2: Pylon HeadingB

During this stage, the specification of the thermal camera

inside CAT S60 will be thoroughly analysed such as the
resolution of the thermal camera, thermal sensitivity, and
thermal accuracy. These factors are crucial in this
research because the actual thermal image comes with an Figure 3: Boiling water temperature
excellent thermal camera. Table 1 below shows the
specification of the thermal camera inside Cat S60.

• Thermal sensor • 17mm pixel size, c. Calibration by distance

• Thermal resolution
• Thermal Accuracy
8-14mm spectral
range Calibration distance of thermal camera by CATS60 to prove
the hardware capabilities. This method will capture the image
of an object with a thermometer from a difference distance to
• 80 x 60 measure the accuracy of the thermal reading from the
minimum reading to maximum reading that Cat S60 can
handle. Method of calibration by distance explained as
• ±5°C (Typical below:
±3°C), or ±5%

• Thermal Range • Heat sources 0m 10 m 20 m 30 m Distance, m

detectable to 30
meters (100ft)
Object

Figure 1 Thermal camera distance calibration

Table 1: Specification of Thermal Camera of Cat S60
For every 10 meters, capture thermal image twice to check
any difference of thermal reading on the image. First, capture
at 30meter distance of the object and simultaneously record
the reading temperature on the thermometer. Proceed to the
20 meter, 10 meters, and 0 meters (closely to the object). The
difference of the reading for each distance will be checked
with the real temperature reading on the thermometer.
 d. System Development
This stage is the most crucial part of this research since there
is no GIS software can handle reading a binary data of the
thermal image. By using R language and Shiny App
developing a system that can read the raw data and binary
data from the thermal image to translate it back to
temperature is no longer an issue.
Figure 5: Thermal image data
e. Convert Binary data to temperature
data
From an image, we need to convert the raw binary data to
temperature. Table 2 (a) below show the binary raw data and
Table 5(b)show the temperature value.
Table 2(a) Raw binary data
Table (b) Temperature data
3. RESULTS AND ANALYSIS
Development process analysis important to determine
whether this project of utilizing thermal phone in hotspots
either successful or failure. The project analysis is based on
the system workflow, how to collect the thermal data, stored
the data to database and process or manipulate the thermal
raw data of the pylon. Explanation will include all the
elements on the of each element, along with the process with
them. These mobile application is built to develop database
by using a thermal camera data to identify the conditions of
the electrical substation to monitoring electrical substation
(pylon) by Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB).
a. Thermal Application
For this project, thermal equipment application has two
functions in capture the thermal image of the pylon and
sync the thermal image to a server which shown in the
Figure 5. There are four main button that allows the user
to snap the thermal image, sync the thermal image, view
online gallery and clear all the image at the domain
gallery. The repository server that used for this
application is http://bigdata2.changeip.org/pylon/upload.
The explaination of the button as below:
 which is defining the temperature base on the clustering
value.

Figure 6: Thermal Database

Figure 5: Thermal Application

d. Generate KML file
• Snap Image The technician will receive the KML file using their phone
and open the KML file in a google map or google earth for
The button of Snap Image is for capture the image using the
getting more information on the pylon and the direction to the
FLIR thermal camera.
pylon. Below shows that how it looks after the technician
open the KML file in their phone:

• Repository

The button of Sync Repository is for upload the thermal

image to the server domain.

• View Online Gallery

The button of View Online Gallery is to view the thermal

image that has been uploaded.

b. Sync data to server

All thermal image that has been captured will be sync

automatically via repository linked to the domain:
http://bigdata2.changeip.org/pylon/UploadToServer.php.
After sync with the server thermal image that has been
upload will be inside the server folder for further analysis and
to kept inside a database via Rstudio.

c. Thermal Database

Based on the figure 6 data collected from field we can

analysis the thermal image to find any hotspot in pylon. For
analysis using Rstudio we need to recall data from the
database and start analysis for the thermal image. For finding Figure 7(a): KML file open by Google Map
the hotspot in the pylon we are using a method called Kmean

Figure 7(b): More detail in Google Map
4. CONCLUSIONS
The developing of the application towards the field data
collection requires time because it needs to build from
scratch. For starters, we need an SDK file that already given
by the FLIR company that contain all the standard coding for
the thermal application that can be modified and built.
Coding the programming code for the thermal application are
hard and takes some time because of inexperience in
programming and at the same time, we need to combine these
SDK with other functionality such as sync with the server,
upload to a database and more based on the objective given to
this research. All this coding is done using NetBeans that
support the Android Gradle for creating an android
application. After this app has been developing and built, we
can start our data collection by turn on the apps and capture
the thermal image of the pylon. The app built named as Taro
Thermal apps.
For the overall conclusion, the aim and objective to create
apps for capture the thermal image, analysis the thermal
image of pylon and pylon thermal image data collection
already have been achieved. Standard and requirement by
referring to the user need assessment have been designing
based on the interview session. The compilation of the data
can accomplish by collecting the data using the Taro
Thermal. Also, it can reduce the time to do the data
collection, and all the information had synchronized each
other. The location of the pylon has provided by using the
smartphone GPS, and every of the picture captures the image
would geotag by the time stamp and value of GPS.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Faculty of Architecture, Planning and Surveying Universiti
Teknologi MARA (UiTM) and special thanks to who directly
or indirectly involved in this study.
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