Pulsar Helion 2 Pro

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After the wildfires devastated Maui in 2023, one of the many victims left in the aftermath were the pets. These animals were left homeless and separated from their families who were relocated to shelters or relatives homes; some on other islands. These house pets were thirsty and hungry out in the open.

My neighbor Jessica, traveled to Maui as a volunteer to help locate these abandoned animals. Traumatized, they often hid from searchers. Fortunately, Jessica brought a Helion 2 thermal monocular which helped them locate many of these animals.

The Helion 2 is a handheld thermal imaging camera that has video and photo capabilities. Its lens has a built-in base magnification of 2.5x. The images look like black-and-white high-resolution security camera footage highlighted by bright red objects which are heat sources (it renders temperature differences rather than raw heat). It is also able to magnify its footage to 5x, 10x, and 20x but this is a digital zoom, which in effect enlarges the pixels and renders less detail.

Thermal imaging is a huge leap in detecting living things at night and even in complete darkness. In some ways better than Gen3 night vision goggles. But it does so with the same >$3000 dollar price tag as military-grade night vision. It’s certainly not something I will be purchasing anytime soon but I’m glad volunteers like my neighbor had access to this technology to do good.

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Creative Director, Content Creator, and Game Producer

Tom "Moondog" DelMundo is a former NYC Creative Director.

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