I found this forum by accident looking up the E4 resolution with Google. Worth it just for finding the hidden menu with USB webcam mode; thanks guys.
I have to say, though, that multipage threads in a forum make for terrible documentation, compared to a a wiki or a CMS or just about anything, except maybe a mailing list that no-one's archived.
I have an E4 model E4 1.1L part no 63901-0101 software 1.22.0
Hidden menu shows Appcore 22.0.0.1, confkit E4 1.1L, appkit 1.0.17
I thought I would try the resolution hack.
I normally use Linux; I was able to build the cfc_generator easily after fixing the md5.h filename case. But USB NDIS won't work, or I'm not persistant enough. It works nicely with my Beagleboard, but with the E4 the eth4 interface comes up but then the E4 does not respond to DHCP requests. I tried setting the address manually but get no response.
Not that NDIS is much better on Windows; I borrowed a Windows 8.1 laptop and loaded the FLIR drivers. Considering that the E4 also runs a Microsoft OS (Windows CE), the quality of this procedure is appalling. I refuse on principle to reboot computers just to install something and at least that was not necessary (apart from the E4, which I'll forgive). The NDIS interface almost always appeared in the Windows control panel when I entered NDIS mode, or connected the USB cable, but then most of the time the process hung saying "identifying..". I suspect it hangs at the same point as in Linux, waiting for a DHCP response. I had some success using the Windows troubleshooter, clicking the interface icon and using "diagnose", which does some magic including "resetting" the interface. It didn't always work first time, or second. I also as per the forum notes disabled the other network interfaces. When it worked, it seemed to stay working with ipconfig showing the interface address as 192.168.0.1 and the gateway address as 192.168.0.2 (the E4). On occasions when it did not work, I saw e.g. interface address 192.168.1.1 but
gateway address 192.168.0.2. Frankly, this is ridiculous. It should work first time, every time, without having to disable anything, same as the Beagleboard does on Linux. However, I doubt that complaining to FLIR about an undocumented feature is likely to prove rewarding.
Once the NDIS interface was up and working, I was able to access the E4 filesystem with command-line ftp or with winscp in ftp mode, and, I think, re-enable the other network interfaces.
So, the hack. I was able to retrieve conf.cfc, decrypt it, edit, run the CFC generator, re-encrypt it. That all seemed to work fine, as per examples I've seen on the forum. I checked the text file with "od -a" in Linux and see "cr lf" between all the lines and at the end of the file. The ID in the original matches the serial number printed on my E4.
I tried using conf_template.cfg (the E8 file), and modified versions of my original E4 config with just the resolution changed. When I upload them as conf.cfc and reboot (removing the battery) the E4 works in IR mode but if I switch image mode to "Digital camera" and take a picture, I get "application appcore.exe encountered a serious error" and the camera hangs until powered off. "Thermal MSX" is also missing in the menu. When taking a picture in thermal mode, the visible light thumbnail is blank and there is no image saved to SD. The thermal image seems completely normal - same apparent resolution as usual, with the same EXIF data still showing E4 and resolution 320x240.
Seems like I'm missing a step or doing something wrong. Any ideas ?
I'm a bit nervous about making random changes in case I brick my camera. Can that happen ?
What are the symptoms of a missing conf.cfc, wrong SSID, wrong ID, or corrupted text (extra comments, changed date, nonsense values for resolution, zoom etc.) ?
What do all the changed config entries actually do, like alarms, irMarkers, measureFuncs ? Should they work, or do they require hardware features that are only in the E80 ?
I would try to be a bit more systematic in recording and reporting things, but the randomness of getting the NDIS link to work is time-consuming and frustrating, and I'm not very good with Windows.
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Later:
I got NDIS to work solidly and reliably on Linux - DHCP didn't work, but I set NetworkManager to recognize the apparent MAC address and use address 192.168.250.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 gw 0.0.0.0. So when I plug the camera in or select USB mode NDIS it comes online strraight away.
After that, the webpage
http://192.168.250.1showed a number of camera parameters such as serial number, number of times the shutter had been triggered, etc.
I could access the camera with ftp both with flir/3vlig and as anonymous.
The crc03 program compiled and ran normally on Linux. ftool compiled OK and decrypts conf.crc OK, but on encryption messes up the 16-byte MD5 section. I suspect an endian issue but it's beyond my skill to fix in reasonable time. Meanwhile ftool.exe runs properly in Wine.
I found I had to set binmode in ftp else the new conf.cfc got uploaded in ascii mode with spurious linefeeds. Now I have I think improved resolution, and the visible light image is getting saved properly again. I uploaded a custom splash screen ("this camera belongs to me") for fun.
In UVC mode I can get a picture with webcam software such as "cheese". Video capture did not work for me in cheese, probably I'm missing some streaming libraries, but I could use e.g. "mencoder -tv device=/dev/video1 -ovc copy -o try.avi tv://1" (from mplayer)
http://andrew.daviel.org/E4-blog.htmlAndrew