Coti an/pas-29
I'm aware of these and how they work but I don't know much past that. I've always kinda liked the idea of having nv/thermal at the same time but now I'm very interested. Last night I let a yote slip away because I was flipping my anvis up to use the handheld thermal to look for him and in the process he busted me....
So! I already have a L3 pvs-14 and all the stuff to get it on a helmet and the helmet it's self. I'm thinking of maybe replacing the anvis with a COTI. But I need to know more about it first.
What's the detection range on yote/hogs/rabbits and such?
Who all makes it?
Are they just a waste of money?
Can I even own one?
Thanks and for those that don't know what I'm talking about here's a pic.
Jay
There's several modes of operations: (1) full hot, (2) patrol mode, and (3) outline mode, and then all three of these modes in either white-hot or black-hot.
The detection is quite good, actually. With the unit set to the proper parameters, you will be able to recognize the profile of a human, versus fox, versus deer, versus bear out to around 300 meters. Detecting the heat signature of small birds (not even as large as a grown man's closed fist), sleeping in the trees at night is easy out to 200 meters.
Here's the catch: the default settings are designed for law enforcement, fire and rescue, and other first responders, and optimized for thermal detection and recognition within 100 meters. HOWEVER, military and law enforcement customers are permitted access to the firmware, and can tailor the sensor attributes for different types of environments, applications, and detection and recognition ranges they are most likely to need or encounter -- including focus and field of view, both of which are unavailable in the default modes.
Once you are exposed to the firmware, your impression will be that this is the most powerful user-programming capability of any portable thermal imager on the market. It is even possible to program different reticles (with azimuth adjustments) for spotting, ranging, or aiming weapons into the display. However, this access is limited to military and law enforcement customers ONLY.
The U.S. Military continues to procure and issue the COTI as the AN/PAS-29. There is a revision with much more thermal sensitivity, higher resolution and image processing capability available to the military, but I am not at liberty to discuss the details.
The manufacturer's company policy is to restrict sales to government purchase only. For a short while, there were lapses in the enforcement of this policy by authorized distributors, but the enforcement appears to have resumed - at least for the new units.
Patrol mode is what frustrates most users without access to the firmware. It appears, in default mode, to have weak thermal sensitivity. However, with firmware access, Patrol mode becomes the most powerful mode - where it can be tuned to highlight people or objects emitting within a specific temperature band with endpoints controlled by the user. This allows, for example, only the warmer bodies of persons or animals to be highlighted for thermal imaging with all other "thermal noise" cut out and replaced with the much more detailed i^2 (night vision) imaging. Once Patrol mode is tuned, flipping to outline mode is fantastic - people, animals, and motor vehicles moving around are highlighted with precise outlines, and placing the output from infrared laser aimers "inside the silhouettes" is as easy as "shooting fish in a barrel" or "video game easy". The COTI has a very fast capture rate - 60 Hz - which keeps up with things moving around in real-time.
I've been able to set up multi-point banding for Patrol mode. This allows me to have imaging specially tuned for detecting warm bodies of living creatures, motor vehicles, and the heat signature of tree trunks and branches for instance. In really adverse thermal imaging conditions - such as wet and windy, with high humidity or heavy fog and extremely cold or hot temperatures persistent for longer than 48 hours with little to no variance - I'll use my multi-point settings in Patrol mode for viewing. In these worst case conditions, I've found the COTI with multi-point banded Patrol mode to outperform the FLIR T50/60/70 and Insight LWTS and MTM to detect warm bodies and trees / bushes within 150 meters. When set to black-hot mode and fused with night vision, bad weather navigation and threat assessment in difficult terrain is substantially improved over night-vision only or thermal imaging only viewing.
Below is a composite photo of the COTI that I've posted previously on these boards. The inset at the lower right corner is of some images captured with the snapshot feature of the COTI and then photographed through the ocular of a PVS-14. The top is a black-hot image in Patrol mode (without the night vision fusion), while the lower image is the same geography in outline mode (without the night vision fusion). I was experimenting with the firmware settings to max out the thresholds for Patrol mode to get Outline mode to "highlight everything" ... note how the Outline mode detected the human (circled in red oval) that is not easily seen in the black hot image. That person (highlight in red oval) by the way, is 100 yards away. The quality and resolution of the actual images seen is much higher than the pictures, but I was too lazy to set up the lens and coupler between the PVS-14 and digital SLR for better photos, so crappy iPad camera photos is all you see here.
One of these days I'll get around to setting-up for and taking better photos of what the COTI is fully capable of.
IR-V
