I have seen an interesting 'fault' on my FLIR Ex chassis based ETS320 and thought I would share it here in case anyone else sees similar on their camera. The 'Ex' chassis is used in the E4, E5, E6, E8 and ETS320.
Some quick background on my ETS320 for those who have not seen my ETS320 improvements thread...
I purchased a partially dismantled ETS320 that was sold as 'Spares or Repair' on eBay. The chassis module of the unit had been removed for reasons unknown and due to the crazy design of the unit, it could not be re-assembled by the owner. It was disposed of as working it dismantled. It was also described as new which I found interesting. The unit was manufactured in March 2017 and is running firmware 3.5 on Hardware 2.0L. It is basically a 2017 Ex camera chassis placed into a 'microscope like' housing for PCB inspection work.
I intend to upgrade the firmware to 3.9 but want to leave that until I am certain all is well with the unit. (Upgrading a faulty units firmware can be risky if it crashes mid update !)
During initial testing of the ETS320 I noted no unusual behaviour, but I was only carrying out cold boots and not a boot from standby. The ETS320 has two 'off' states. With a short press of the power button it goes into a sleep state and automatically goes to 'full off' after 48 hours of non use. A long press of the power button initiates a 'full off' condition. In the sleep state, a press of the power button returns the unit to full operation in a couple of seconds without a boot sequence visible. When in the 'full off' state, a press of the power button starts the cold boot sequence and takes the usual 20 seconds or so to boot.
I have not been using the ETS320 much as it is still in pieces awaiting my upgrades. It has been charged and used for a few minutes total run time.
During some further testing I set the unit to sleep and then woke it up again. I was surprised to see what looked like a Star field of twinkling pixels on the display ! I recognised the pattern as likely the dead pixels on the microbolometer. I initiated another sleep, followed by another wake up and the 'Star field' remained. A full reboot from the 'full off' state returned the camera to normal operation with not a single dead pixel visible. Tests proved the unit to be working perfectly. I once again initiated the sleep mode and then woke the camera. The 'Star field' returned ! Further testing showed the 'fault' to be repeatable but sometimes the camera would come out of sleep with a normal display. The length of time sat in the sleep state seemed to effect whether the 'Star field' appeared or not. Interesting
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once the 'Star Field appeared it could not be eradicated by warm boots. Only a cold boot provided a normal display. A cold boot refreshes all calibration and dead pixel data held in volatile memory.
Here is a précis of my thought processes.....
1. Camera boots from cold without issues. Part of the cold boot is reading of the Dead Pixel map and NUC tables.
2. After a cold boot the camera operates perfectly. Time and date present and accurate in RTC.
3. Camera enters sleep state from which it can awake in seconds. The processing systems within the camera must enter a low power state and maybe contune to retain the Dead Pixel Map and NUC data in powered memory, ready for use upon awaking.
4. When camera awakes from a short sleep, all is normal. When camera awakes from a longer sleep, the display shows a 'Star field' of twinkling pixels. This suggests a time related degradation or loss of valid data.
5. The RTC maintains correct data and time even when the 'Star Field' appears.
6. Sometimes significant corruption of the thermal display occurs instead of the 'Star field'. This suggests the possibility of a powered memory device holding image related data becoming corrupted.
7. The RTC Lithium cell voltage reads 3V3 which appears healthy. The cell is rechargeable but it is not known hen charge is applied to it. The camera may need to be in the on state to supply a charge to the cell, much like some laptops that use similar RTC power supplies.
8. There may be a memory area that holds key calibration and image data whilst the camera is in sleep mode. When cold booted the camera fills that memory area with fresh, valid data. If the memory is volatile it needs a power supply whilst the camera is sleeping. Could that power supply be inadequate for some reason and causing the corruption or loss of the data it is holding ?
9. Where could the volatile memory power come from ? There are two sources in the camera, the Main Ali-Ion cell, and the tiny rechargeable Lithium RTC cell. Which provides the power to the memory, if that is indeed the case, is not yet known. I have previously seen RTC cells powering configuration memory and the memory can become corrupted at a voltage higher than the RTC requires to maintain time and date.
The camera has been left running for several hours today in an effort to fullybchsrge both Lithium cells. I will carry out further testing with the camera self powered and powered from its external power supply. The results may reveal whether there is an issue with the cameras internal Lithium cells, or that the problem has been resolved by the long charge period charging the tiny Lithium RTC cell.
An interesting little 'fault' but not one that concerns me. I tend to cold boot my cameras so a warm boot issue is no great drama. I will try to identify the cause however.
Sorry, no pictures yet as I did not bother to take any to date. If the 'Star field' returns I will capture an image of it for others to use as a comparison if they suffer the same issue.
Fraser