Amber Galileo/Radiance HS MWIR 3-5um InSb

[Fraser]

I have just ordered a Series 1 Linear flash card of 2MB capacity from the USA. They are surprisingly difficult to find and those that I found were expensive. I ended up buying from a seller who checks the cards for their type and this avoids the "Russian Roulette" of buying random, unidentified cards. The seller is detailed below:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/220955052254

The card is sensibly priced at around £18 but the postage to the UK cost as much as the card Such is life. I did not really want to spend £40 right now but if I wait too long, the Series 1 cards will either increase further in price or become even harder to find at any price. They are a superseded Series of Linear Flash card after all. (Most hosts would be happy to work with Series 1, 2 or 2+)

I shall advise whether the card works with the Radiance 1 once it arrives and I have tested it.

Fraser

[MrSheep]

Yeah the cards are pricey now. The one I was looking at was $100usd. And yeah honestly not too large of a price to pay given the fact your other Radiance 1 wasn't broken at all and now works 

[cynfab]

Can your efforts use an Intel Series 2 card? I have a few 10MB ones iMC010FLSA-20 M9418008 that I could make available.

[Fraser]

Hi Cynfab,

Thank you for the kind offer 

Sadly it is the series 1 cards that are needed as without changing the PCMCIA port PAL chip programming from V1.0 to V1.1 the camera will not communicate with Series 2 cards. The challenge facing us is in finding vintage Series 1 cards or copying my V1.1 PAL chip. Whilst such is possible, I have not got the spare time at the moment to ‘play’.

Fraser

[Fraser]

Yesterday I tested both of my Radiance 1 cameras with UserMenu 3 and RTOOLS. I can confirm that RTOOLS works with the Radiance 1 but it is worthy of note that the installation offers separate Galileo/Radiance HS and Radiance 1 camera driver options. The user manual states that the two drivers are for the different bit patterns used by the cameras. I tried a 3rd party Radiance HS control program and, whilst it found the camera, it’s commands were ignored by the Radiance 1. I have yet to get UserMenu even seeing the camera ! Of note is the fact that UserMenu uses Com 2 serial port by default and whilst it is supposed to use Com 1 if started with “UserMenu 1”, this does not work and it still tries to open Com 2. I tried all sorts of command variations to get it to use Com 1 but failed. I had a laptop that could assign Com 2 to its hardware serial port via the BIOS but that did not work either. It is such a pity as UserMenu appears to offer a lot of useful utilities. I spent a whole day using various software and computers with the Radiance 1 and made some discoveries along the way. RTOOLS is the only software that would work with my two Radiance 1 cameras. I now have my original Series 1 PCMCIA card installed in the second Radiance 1 that has the V1.0 PAL configuration. I installed a nice Pretec 2MB Series 2+ card in my original camera and it is working fine with that thanks to its V1.1 PAL configuration.

Once I had RTOOLS working with the two cameras, I carried out NUC procedures for the 4 NUC memory locations. All went as expected and this corrected a “soft error” indication (normally configuration or calibration related) that had been present on the original Radiance 1 (flashing yellow temperature LED even when at operating temperature). The NUC used the internal temperature reference flag so was not as accurate as using an external large area Blackbody source, but it was good enough for my tests. The internal flag is heated and cooled using a Peltier module and has limited temperature range WRT ambient temperature. This can cause issues if a NUC temperature set point is too far away from Ambient for the Peltier to achieve within the preset timeout period. After an NUC process is completed I was able to check the Dead Pixel map details that were created from the NUC tests. I thought I had a bug in the NUC process as the original camera had over 1000 dead pixels ! After completing the same process on the second camera I saw only 49 dead pixels. Oh dear I experimented with NUC settings on the original camera but, sure enough, it has around 1000 pixels that are either non functional, twinkling or out of acceptable tolerance range. For my needs this is no great drama, but still a pity. The second camera sensor array is in great condition and working well. The 49 dead pixels were the worst case scenario with other NUC ranges show far fewer.

When checking the cameras cooler hours I found that the original camera has less than 2000 hours on it but there is an anomaly with the hours counter on the second camera. It is indicating Millions of hours and many thousands of power cycles. This is likely the result of random data in the battery backed memory IC. Sadly the hours counter may have been lost when the Lithium battery died. I do not know how to reset that counter yet but it is not greatly important as the original data is lost.

Fraser

[MrSheep]

Yeah my theory is that the first few bytes of the hex command structure tells the software what camera it is. If we can sniff the hex commands when you push buttons in the RTools software you can prob figure it out. Hopefully we can compare this to usermenu 3 and see if there is any similar in the hex commands.

I have the same issue with the cooler hours for the second camera. No idea how to reset it either.

Also I think I have the blinking temp bug for my original Radiance 1 (It reteaches temp but keeps blinking yellow). How did you fix it?

[Fraser]

From reading the user manual I believe the blinking yellow “Temperature” LED is indicating a non critical “soft error”. That is an error in the way the camera has been configured or an error in the calibration. I did not set out to correct that error, it was corrected whilst I carried out the NUC process on the 4 memory areas. It just suddenly stopped blinking ! I have to wonder whether there was a corruption in one of the stored NUC tables that was overwritten with valid data during the new NUC creation process.

Also worthy of note…… The 2 point NUC process available on the cameras side panel or via the PC software will update the dead pixel map by adding any new dead pixels that it finds. It does not create a complete new dead pixel map ! If an NUC update leaves some dead pixels visible it is recommended that the 2 point NUC is run again (without deleting the previous map so that it is an additive process) in an effort to capture them. Adjustments may also be made in the PC software to fine tune the dead pixel capture settings. In order to create a brand new fresh dead pixel map, the user needs to delete the dead pixel map for a specific, or all, NUC memories using the PC software option for such. A fresh complete dead pixel map will be captured during the next 2 point NUC process. This must then be repeated for each NUC memory position that had its dead pixel map erased. It might be useful to create a fresh new dead pixel map sometimes in case any corruption has occurred in the data that would benefit the camera by being “flushed out” with a new map.

Fraser

[MrSheep]

Nice this is very good info. I have cameras that have a few stubborn dad pixels (merlin). I am going to try to get rid of them using my blackbody calibrator and the process you mentioned.

[Fraser]

You can fine tune the pixel output tolerance and “Twinkling pixel” detection to capture borderline pixels. It is not 100% effective on my original camera though. The manual explains that this is because the pixels either side of the dead pixel are used as the references so more than one dead pixel positioned together can cause problems. Then you are into manual pixel deletion but that uses H and V pixel co-ordinates for a problematic pixel. RDAC can provide the H and V co-ordinates.

Fraser

[MrSheep]

Nice, yeah that makes sense. I've done manual bad pixel corrections before on uncooled cameras within FLIR's old web gui so I am familiar with the H and V co-ordinates.

[IR_Geek]

The Galileo/Radiance HS and Radiance 1 require different initialization.   While the camera lineup are similar, there are fundamental differences in them.  The HS was intended for higher speed collections and more robust electronics overall.   Note that the HS core electronics is completely sealed and cooled by convection ... it's built like a tank.  The Radiance 1 was cheaper and more of a 'thermography' camera.   Cheaper in this context is subjective ... 75K to 100K vs. 125K to 150K depending on options.      Note that the Radiance 1 has a fan with an inlet in the front to cool the electronics.  While you can get raw digital data over the SCSI type connector, it was not that cameras main utilization.   Additionally it has the side buttons to control but the HS needs a PC or an external control box. 

[MrSheep]

I have just ordered a Series 1 Linear flash card of 2MB capacity from the USA. They are surprisingly difficult to find and those that I found were expensive. I ended up buying from a seller who checks the cards for their type and this avoids the "Russian Roulette" of buying random, unidentified cards. The seller is detailed below:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/220955052254

The card is sensibly priced at around £18 but the postage to the UK cost as much as the card Such is life. I did not really want to spend £40 right now but if I wait too long, the Series 1 cards will either increase further in price or become even harder to find at any price. They are a superseded Series of Linear Flash card after all. (Most hosts would be happy to work with Series 1, 2 or 2+)

I shall advise whether the card works with the Radiance 1 once it arrives and I have tested it.

Fraser

I was able to get another card. Not exactly the same as my original intel one but one by AMD and it has the same chip I believe (28F010)
I was able to read my original card and copy the common.pcc and the attribute.pcc and copy them to the new card's common and attribute sectors respectively.

I put it in my Radiance 1 and the camera booted up with it's normal LED's and Beeps .

So as long as you can get Intel Series 1 (28F010) cards you can revive a Radiance 1 missing its Linear Flash Card. Or just simply to have a backup.

[Fraser]

Thanks for this news  My Intel Series 1 card is still making its way to me from the USA at a snails pace It sat in a USPS parcel consolidation centre for 8 days ! I was not aware that the Attribute memory was needed. My original camera works with a copy of the Common memory and no Attribute memory present. In fact I do not recall the original flash card having attribute memory.

I am surprised to see an AMD flash card using Intel 28F10 memory IC’s as the AMD cards that I have all use AMD 29Fxx series IC’s but, sure enough, the AMD data book confirms 28F10 IC’s in your card.

Hopefully the Intel Series 1 card that is on its way to me will also be compatible with the ‘fussy’ Radiance 1 camera.

Fraser

[MrSheep]

Yeah I think your theory with the Intel Series 1 is correct. So it should work.

And yeah I wasn't sure if attribute was needed but after reading my card it contained both sectors. I think the firmware 3.0 you sent me a while back had both as well.
I have an Omnidrive like you and in PC Card manager it is pretty easy to copy files to both common and attribute sections. (Basically two tasks) I also checked the erase checkbox when copying to the new AMD card.

[Fraser]

Yes I recall saving the original card contents in both Common and Attribute mode. All of the LF cards that I have tried did NOT have attribute memory fitted. Could it be that the ‘Fussy’ cameras need certain information in the attribute memory in order to use the card ? If that were the case, it might be possible to use Series 2 cards that contain Attribute memory ? Sadly I cannot test this theory as I do not have suitable cards. I will look at my saved images of the original card to see if I can make any sense of the attribute memory.
You could try erasing the attribute memory on your new card to see if the camera still accepts the card.

Fraser

[Fraser]

I just checked my backup files for the original Amber linear flash card. Both the “Common” and “Attribute” versions of the backup are the same. Either I accidentally saved the common file area twice, or my card has no attribute memory and so just the Common area contents were saved.

Fraser

[MrSheep]

That is interesting. Yeah I will try just flashing just the common.pcc to the card later today. Hopefully it only needs the common sector so it allows for more compatibility with other cards.

[MrSheep]

Alright I erased the card and only copied over the common.pcc over this time. And it works!

[Fraser]

Great  So it is the Series 1 card type that is the key to success.