tcamViewerDesktop

Linux/desktop viewer for the tCam thermal imaging camera — a Compose Multiplatform Desktop port of tcamViewer2 (the Android app).

Connects to a tCam over WiFi/TCP (port 5001), decodes its JSON-framed radiometric + telemetry frames, applies a color palette, and displays live thermal video with spotmeter/region temperature readout.

Build & run

./gradlew run

Package a native installer (.deb / AppImage)

./gradlew packageDeb
./gradlew packageAppImage

Status

Ported from tcamViewer2’s Android source: the TCP protocol layer (net/CameraService.kt), radiometric/telemetry decode + palette mapping (util/CameraUtils.kt, model/ImageDto.kt), and the full view-model (model/CameraViewModel.kt) — connect/disconnect with auto-reconnect, live streaming, point spotmeter + region measurement, AGC/manual-range/palette/units control, temperature-over-time history, temperature alerts, single-frame save, recording (.mtjsn), and time-lapse capture (.tltjsn).

The UI has four tabs behind a NavigationRail (ui/App.kt):

• Camera (ui/CameraScreen.kt) — connect/Get/Stream/Record/Save, a flat field correction (FFC) button that sends a run_ffc command to manually trigger the Lepton’s calibration, the live thermal image with spotmeter tap-to-move / region drag-to-move-or-resize overlay, temperature readouts, and the temperature-history chart.
• Settings (ui/SettingsScreen.kt) — staged Save/Cancel editing (mirrors the Android app’s pattern) over camera IP (with an mDNS “Find tCam Devices” search button), palette, units, manual range, shutter sound, spotmeter/region toggle, temperature alerts, and — while connected — AGC/emissivity/gain mode and a WiFi config dialog with SSID scanning (nmcli).
• Library (ui/LibraryScreen.kt) — browses saved .tjsn frames, .mtjsn recordings, and .tltjsn time lapses grouped by date folder, multi-select delete, a date-range filter, a full-size browse view with Export-to-PNG, and frame-by-frame video playback (ui/VideoPlayerWindow.kt) with skip ±5, play/pause, and speed control for time lapses.
• Charts (ui/ChartsScreen.kt) — browses saved .tchart temperature-history files the same way, with a full chart view on browse.

mDNS discovery (net/CameraDiscovery.kt) uses JmDNS — the desktop JVM has no built-in mDNS/DNS-SD client the way Android’s NsdManager provides one. On a multi-homed machine (wired + WiFi both up), a plain JmDNS.create() picks one interface and can silently miss cameras reachable only on the other, so discovery binds a separate JmDNS instance to every active non-loopback IPv4 interface and merges the results. It’s also wired into CameraViewModel’s auto-reconnect: after retrying the last-known IP a few times, it falls back to a fresh mDNS scan in case the camera’s DHCP lease changed. WiFi SSID scanning (util/WifiScanner.kt) shells out to nmcli for the same reason — no portable desktop WiFi-scan API exists the way Android’s WifiManager provides one.

Composite image export (util/CompositeExport.kt) — the colorized image plus header/sidebar (color bar, spotmeter arrow, max/min)/footer (gain, emissivity, date/time) chrome — is ported from Android’s buildShareBitmap(), saving to ~/tCamViewer/Exports/ instead of Android’s gallery share sheet (no desktop equivalent of Intent.ACTION_SEND).

Not yet ported from the Android app:

• MP4 export/share for recordings and time lapses (Android’s VideoExporter uses MediaCodec; no portable desktop video encoder wired up)
• Fullscreen toggle in the video player

Saved files land under ~/tCamViewer/{Pictures,Movies,Charts,Exports}/MM_DD_YYYY/.