Flir E4 Thermal imaging camera teardown

[Fraser]

I am pleased to see that you gained access to the required menu

Sadly I have never used this facility so cannot offer any reason why it does not appear to be working. The utility is present unlike later E4 cameras so your i7 should be able to update its dead pixel map.

Hopefully someone else has tried this menu and will be able to help. I am certainly interested in hearing more about this dead pixel map editor.

Fraser

[Chanc3]

Hello. Today tried to remove bad pixels. Thermal imager Flir i7. Nothing succeeded. Or an error or indicates that he killed but nothing changes. Maybe someone knows how to kill a damaged pixels.

I think you are using the wrong method to remove the dead pixel. Can you remind me what is in the drop down?

[Uho]

I tried all the methods. A little later, I will lay out the photo pixels methods of killing. Video of my attempt.
https://youtu.be/EM2SFf2Txrs

[Uho]

Metods

[Chanc3]

Metods

You need to click on the image first, to select the bad pixel to replace. I couldn't see you doing that in the video. If you hold CTRL and click, you can place multiple points.

[Uho]

Yes. I chose a bad pixel pointing cross.

[Chanc3]

Yes. I chose a bad pixel pointing cross.

In which case, it may be because there is too much damage to the detector. A friend of mine had a similar problem when some kid shone a laser into his £30K FLIR T650sc and it damaged the detector (FLIR quoted something like £10,000 to fix). Sorry I cannot be of any more help.

[Uho]

Yes, similar to damage to the laser. I will try to point out a few bad pixels. One does not kill.

[Fraser]

A test you could try is to kill a known good pixel in one corner and see if the camera accepts this. If it does, but refuses to correct one of the dead pixels, you know that the damage is such that the dead pixel algorithm cannot cope with the significant damage present. A dead pixel map is normally filled with individual or small clusters of malfunctioning pixels. The masking algorithm uses surrounding pixel values to average the value of the malfunctioning pixels. If the algorithm is presented with many more malfunctioning pixels around the one it is trying to mask, an error may occur. The algorithm is pretty dumb as it normally hides very small numbers of pixels in any one area. Imagine that it is told of one dead pixel and then it averages the value of the 8 surrounding pixels but one or two of them provide crazy data.... Depending upon how clever the algorithm is, this could really mess up its averaging calculation!  FLIR would reject any sensor with significant clusters of failed pixels so the algorithm is not faced with such a situation normally.

I fear the damage to the sensor is too extensive in this case. It is not possible to buy a new microbolometer and manually calibrate the i7 yourself so sadly this camera would have to be repaired by FLIR and that is normally uneconomic.

Sorry the news is not better.

Keep experimenting with the dead pixel editor though. You never know, you may get lucky and manage to convince the camera to accept a large number of deap pixels if they are ALL selected at the same time ? You could even try selecting an area of good pixels +1 from the boundary of dead pixels and marking those as bad such may provide enough boundary data for the algorithm to accept a dead zone. You cannot really use the camera as it is so with a try.

Fraser

[stylon]

Two weeks ago I purchased a Flir E4 bundled with a FLIR power bank for a discounted price of €799 from a German electronic component distributor and initially was a bit sceptical wether it's suitable to apply the hack. It turned out to be manufactured & calibrated in December 2015 (probably the reason why it was bundled with a power bank) and came with firmware version 2.8. Ignoring all your posts about downgrading to 2.3 , I did upgrade to 2.11 instead and applied both hacks afterwards. Following the usual instructions at http://fubar.gr/hacking-the-flir-e4/ and using the 2.11 specific hack files from https://www.eevblog.com/forum/thermal-imaging/flir-e4-thermal-imaging-camera-teardown/msg921880/#msg921880 worked like a charm and I've now both the 320x240 thermal picture and the E8 menu entries. Thank you all very very much  ! So, maybe the thread owner wants to add that piece of information (2.8 -> upgrade to 2.11 -> apply hack) to the initial list of hack options.

Some might be interested in or may have purchased the same "bundle". Despite being bundled with a power bank, I'm happy with the battery life so far (I gave up testing after roughly 2.5 hours with 20% charge left). These are the only 2 tiny issues overall that I noticed:

• At the top of the display there's a single spot suffering some backlight bleeding that luckily is visible only with the black boot screen in the dark,
• In the Settings menu when scrolling a menu with a larger list of entries, the first and/or last line gets shaded and some of the shaded pixels are not grey, but yellow or orange. I can't say wether this is a software (mal-functioning antialiasing) or hardware (dead pixels) bug, but it's a minor issue anyway because only visible in the Settings menu.

[0-8-15 User]

I bought the same bundle three weeks ago. It came with a calibration certificate from June 2016 and firmware version 2.11.

[jmaja]

I bought the same bundle three weeks ago. It came with a calibration certificate from June 2016 and firmware version 2.11.

So did I, also with June 2016 calibration and 2.11. Only problem was that the power bank was dead. They send me anotherone I got yesterday.

[artanker]

Hi, firends. After improvement on the screen some pixels appeared. How it can be corrected?

[Steve T]

That looks similar to the issue that I had with my used E4.  Mine was much more severe.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/thermal-imaging/flir-e4-thermal-image-breaking-down/

Steve

[artanker]

That looks similar to the issue that I had with my used E4.  Mine was much more severe.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/thermal-imaging/flir-e4-thermal-image-breaking-down/

Steve

My problem is solved. I got ten times the battery. The device ten times was overloaded. And everything is healthy.   

[LizardLik]

Hey Guys,

I have Flir E6  firmware version 2.11 (foolishly updated 2.3.0->2.11.0 ) I have a few questions...
1. Can I upgrade to hold my camera as Flir E4?
2. Do I need to lower version of the firmware to 2.3.0?
3. There are those who have successfully carried out an upgrade Flir E6 -> Flir E8+?

Thanks!

[rob9]

Hello,


 I have one question, too.
Being infected with the TIC-Virus I am considering buying an e4 (seek pro compact and thermal expert are also taken into consideration).

Are flashed E4s with firmware 2.11 able to record e.g. via Flir tools or something similar? I read somewhere about flashed E4s not being able to use Flir tools or record via Flir tools.

thx
robert

[mikeselectricstuff]

The E4 can enumerate as a UVC video device, so you can record in the same way you can from a webcam.

[rob9]

@mikeselectricstuff

ok, thx 

[kmueho]

Hello Guys (and Girls if there are some),

here someone is obviously trying to make some dollars on your work:

http://www.ebay.de/itm/132071219813

My E4 is coming (hopefully) tomorrow. Am already thrilled as this is my first device of this kind.

I already prepared a fresh Win7-32bit virtual machine (VMware) with all drivers, python-scripts (for FW 2.11) and other software...
But don't know yet whether I'll really dare to hack it, but am anyway interestedly reading this thread.

Anyway many thanks to all the contributions.

kmueho

[Samogon]

It is high chanse that seller is one of us

[jmaja]

I already prepared a fresh Win7-32bit virtual machine (VMware) with all drivers, python-scripts (for FW 2.11)

I had no problems with Win7-64bit real machine + 2.11

[rob9]

One more question:

does the e4+ work as a normal uvc webcam even if i remove battery, display and buttoncable and connect the device to a smartphone/laptop via usb?

[kmueho]

I already prepared a fresh Win7-32bit virtual machine (VMware) with all drivers, python-scripts (for FW 2.11)

I had no problems with Win7-64bit real machine + 2.11

My real machine runs on Windows 10-64 (quite modified to suppress all the nowadays MS-eavesdropping ).
Therefore I better won't use it to apply the patches.
Additionally I'm quite restrictive regarding installing programs and device drivers on the host OS which I'll not use everyday. Most of the applications I use already run on VMs.

[plurn]

Just received my new flir E4 with software 2.11. Without downgrading I followed the fubar procedure here http://fubar.gr/hacking-the-flir-e4/  substituting the script pack files FLIR_E4_2.11.0_hack from 2lps here https://www.eevblog.com/forum/thermal-imaging/flir-e4-thermal-imaging-camera-teardown/msg921880/#msg921880

It worked great and I have full resolution and thermal noise removed and lots more menu options and features. I have not detected any issues. All menu features seem to be there and working. I especially like the 3 spots measurement feature.

Thank you very much to fubar and 2lps and to everyone else involved in setting up the scripts and files needed and working out the various improvements.

Changes were done on windows 7 64bit virtual machine on Virtualbox running on macosx hardware. Drivers were fine on windows 7 64bit. Only trick was trying to get Virtualbox to own the flir USB devices as macosx kept trying to mount the USB volume.

Notes for people running a similar virtualbox set up:

– connect the flir to the computer so Virtualbox can see that it exists, then go into the virtual machine settings to tell the virtual machine to own the device. This does not work instantly – you are just configuring it. Then try and unmount the drive in macosx and unplug the flir.
– I think I shut down windows at this point and quit Virtualbox. Might not be needed.
– Start Virtualbox and boot the windows virtual machine
– plug in the flir and windows should see it and install drivers
– once you go through the procedure to change to RNDIS mode, it is a different USB device so you will have to go through a similar procedure (adding the new device to the virtual machine config) to get Virtualbox and the windows virtual machine to own it. Less difficult this time because macosx is not trying to mount a USB drive.

Cheers,
Anthony