The story of a Radiance 1 camera and Frasers quest to find information on it

[MrSheep]

Awesome thanks. And yes I just got one and it works (surprised cuz the thing is almost as old as me lol)! I'll prob post about it later when I am more free. Also im guessing this flash memory is what you are talking about?

[Fraser]

That is the same firmware as is running on my cameras. The PCMCIA flash card is not a common ATA type flash, it is a Linear Flash card, as sometimes found in CISCO routers and other specialist products. It is basically a lump of linear flash memory with no controller as it is directly accessed by the host hardware bus. They can be quite hard to find at sensible prices and the card in the Radiance is tiny capacity at only 1MB !. I believe it is a Type 1 linear flash card but I have tried a type 2 and it also worked. The cameras complete firmware resides on that flash card so it would be a good idea to back up the data on it.

Enjoy your camera 

Fraser

[MrSheep]

Ah that is good to know. I'll take good care of this card then haha. And yes I will look around to see if I can find a spare of these cards and clone the firmware.

I've been playing around with the camera and did the basic things like NUC etc so it seems to work well. What I don't know how to do Is take temp readings. I've attached an article where they are able to have spot measurements and a IR profile. Hoping a manual of some sort will guide me in how to do this. Im assuming it has to do with the RS-232 port

[Fraser]

Early versions of FLIR RTOOLS also supported the Amber Radiance 1

Fraser

[MrSheep]

Oh wow good to know do you happen to know what version? Also do you happen to know where to get the software?

Also regarding the Linear Flash Card, what reader are you using. Thinking of getting something like this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09DKJV18Z/
You think this will work?

[Fraser]

Sadly RTOOLS is long obsolete and so even if you get the software, you cannot obtain the licence

The PC Card reader you linked to is an ATA flash card reader and that cannot handle Linear Flash cards. I bought a CSM Omnidrive Pro LF that can cope with most types of PCMCIA/ PC Card memory modules plus it has the optional Linear Flash support. The unit costs a small fortune new but I bought my unit used for £75 some years ago. It has paid for itself several times over since bought. It comes with everything needed to read and write to the cards that it supports so no other software needs to be sourced.

https://www.csm.de/en/products/cards-and-drives/184-omnidrive-usb2-product-series

There are few options for R/W of Linear Flash drives these days. Some very old laptops had PCMCIA card ports that did support Linear Flash (most did not support R/W of LF cards) but then you need specialist software to read and write the cards

Fraser

 

[MrSheep]

Hmm I see yeah that unit is for sure expensive. I'll look into it more. Also let me know if you find the manual. Wondering if I can connect to it via RS232

[Fraser]

I will upload the manual and user software today. I will include my copy of the V3.0 firmware so you will at least have a backup.

Fraser

[Fraser]

MrSheep,

Radiance 1 document set and software uploaded and link sent to you via DM.

Fraser

[IR_Geek]

What version of manual do you have?   Early versions had some 'errors' and one of them was the RS232 pin out.  Believe it was the ground pin was mis-labled??     If memory serves the manual I located was from 1993 but had an errata set of sheets from 1995 or 1996.

Congrats on landing a Radiance1  !   That and the Radiance HS were work horses of systems.    Look forward to any further testing you do with it.

[MrSheep]

Was able to get RTools to work with my Radiance 1! I used a VM of Windows 7 32bit as I dont think the drivers work on 64 bit machines.

The cooler timer is in minutes and translated to hours I am at 1422.76 hours. So that is still pretty good. IIRC the datasheet says 8000hours MTTF.
Will post more when I find out what I can do with this software.

I still need to figure out the pinout for the motorized lens connector. On the Radiance HS/Galileo it is way more simple as it has only 7 pins. The Radiance 1 has way more pins

[Skivesey]

MrSheep able to write 12v Linear with Cardware7 on an XP 32bit pci riser card Ricoh chip and probably a few others of the 5v variety .

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/thermal-imaging/fraser-now-has-linear-flash-pcmcia-card-readwrite-capability-if-needed/

Not sure why the other guy had problems, worked on two different older 12v write cards for me and still going strong on the original 10mb card I used.

Regards Kevin.