Flir E4 Thermal imaging camera teardown

[calle]

@amigo
You nailed it! Thank you!

@Taucher
When browsing around I noticed that your FlashBFS are missing a lot of the original files as in my untouched folder, is it supposed to be this way?

@randy
Read the first post, that´ll straight out the question mark for you.

[Zucca]

@Taucher
When browsing around I noticed that your FlashBFS are missing a lot of the original files as in my untouched folder, is it supposed to be this way?

Yes, you don't have to replace the original FlashBFS. You just need to merge the two by overwriting the files.

[calle]

@zucca
Cool, now i´ve got my menus in place!

@Taucher
I´ve kept your BC-adress, will send you a couple of beers when I get around to sort out my own.

I think I´ve mentioned it before but a big thank you to all contributors of this thread!!

[randy]

Hello It may sound stupid to few but guys I am unable to find the location e8.cfg and camera.cmd file in the first post. Guys please help
I am not a teck guy. Please let me know how to locate these files.

[wilheldp]

Hello It may sound stupid to few but guys I am unable to find the location e8.cfg and camera.cmd file in the first post. Guys please help
I am not a teck guy. Please let me know how to locate these files.

It's in the ZIP file attached to the following post...

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/flir-e4-thermal-imaging-camera-teardown/msg321956/#msg321956

[Taucher]

Has anyone succeeded in making the temp scale on right hand side smaller/larger/invisible? There are plenty of applications where I don't need it and it eats real estate

I guess you'll want to look at facet_z3.rcc(extracted)\qml\TempScale.qml

It can be rotated, the gradient border can be messed with, you can resize it if you like...
I'm pretty sure one can even use a command like opacity=0 to make stuff transparent...

[enmike]

Hi, all!

I've bought and hacked E4 a month ago. All works perfectly, however I've noticed that the measured temperature is ~ 2K off.
Walls usually are 19'C, but the camera shows 16-17'C. I've also compare it agains i3 (well, i7).
Does anyone noticed this? Or has a fix?

Thanks.

[Taucher]

Hi, all!
I've bought and hacked E4 a month ago. All works perfectly, however I've noticed that the measured temperature is ~ 2K off.
Walls usually are 19'C, but the camera shows 16-17'C. I've also compare it agains i3 (well, i7).
Does anyone noticed this? Or has a fix?
Thanks.

My 2 cents would be on the emissivity settings
Also don't use walls to spaces with different (colder) temperature -> there's a thin air-layer sticking to the wall where the temperature drops a lot.
I hope you have read the great PDF-manual that's included with the cam

[Fraser]

The E4 is not a highly accurate temperature measuring device. Many factors effect the accuracy of the readings it provides. Contact measurement techniques such as a thermocouple or Platinum resistance probe are more accurate.

The E4 specification states +-2% or +-2 Degrees Celcuis error in rreadings, I have measured 3 Degree errors at points in its coverage above 0 Degrees Celcius. Such a specification is equivalent to the accuracy of a $5 digital thermometer. Thermal imaging is often more about temperature differentials and interpretation of what the image is showing, rather than highly accurate readings.

Thermal cameras offer the convenience of non contact temperature measurement, but I do not consider them a precision device in that respect. Even my very expensive industrial cameras have a +-2% +-2 Degree C tolerance.

The E4 is produced at a relatively low price point for such technology, and it would appear that its calibration process may have suffered as a result. Calibration takes time, and so costs FLIR money. The E8 MAY have better calibration due to its higher price point, but this is unconfirmed.

[wilheldp]

My free gift from FLIR shipped today and is supposed to be here tomorrow.  It'll be a surprise what I got.  I chose the laser distance meter from their list, but requested an extra battery, car charger and soft case instead of the distance meter.  They never contacted me to confirm or deny my request, I don't know what's in the box.

[hgg]

Ok, after seeing the hack I am definitely buying the E4!

Can anybody suggest a trustworthy online store in the US from which I can buy it at a good price?

Thanks!

[OrBy]

Has anyone succeeded in making the temp scale on right hand side smaller/larger/invisible? There are plenty of applications where I don't need it and it eats real estate

I guess you'll want to look at facet_z3.rcc(extracted)\qml\TempScale.qml

It can be rotated, the gradient border can be messed with, you can resize it if you like...
I'm pretty sure one can even use a command like opacity=0 to make stuff transparent...

Taucher no chance your RCC depack/pack code will ever make it into any sort of win32 command line app or the like?

[jlr134]

Ok, after seeing the hack I am definitely buying the E4!

Can anybody suggest a trustworthy online store in the US from which I can buy it at a good price?

Thanks!

Tequiptment.net .
On the website request a quote.It should be ~%10 off the list price.

[daves]

Can anybody suggest a trustworthy online store in the US from which I can buy it at a good price?

According to flag in your profile (Greece) you are not allowed to buy in US.

[hgg]

That is great! 
Thank you very much.   

Ok, after seeing the hack I am definitely buying the E4!

Can anybody suggest a trustworthy online store in the US from which I can buy it at a good price?

Thanks!

Tequiptment.net .
On the website request a quote.It should be ~%10 off the list price.

[john19]

Hi, all!

I've bought and hacked E4 a month ago. All works perfectly, however I've noticed that the measured temperature is ~ 2K off.
Walls usually are 19'C, but the camera shows 16-17'C. I've also compare it agains i3 (well, i7).
Does anyone noticed this? Or has a fix?

Thanks.

I've made a few posts about it:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/flir-e4-thermal-imaging-camera-teardown/msg348622/#msg348622
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/flir-e4-thermal-imaging-camera-teardown/msg350193/#msg350193
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/flir-e4-thermal-imaging-camera-teardown/msg358979/#msg358979

[hgg]

Ok, I asked for a quote giving them my Greece billing info and telling them that it
will be shipped in Illinois, but they told me they cannot ship it to Greece...

I wrote again to make it clear that it will be shipped to a US address and I am waiting
for a response...

Anyway, it looks like that they don't have it in stock.  Only the E8.

Can anybody suggest a trustworthy online store in the US from which I can buy it at a good price?

According to flag in your profile (Greece) you are not allowed to buy in US.

[randy]

Thanks wilheldp  I really appreciate your help.

[Taucher]

Taucher no chance your RCC depack/pack code will ever make it into any sort of win32 command line app or the like?

I'd love to code a "hackcenter" or at least some same-os-tools... but right now I'm pretty busy with other projects. 
The code should be pretty easy to port once one has a dev-environment with QT set up.

I decided to go for linux as the whole qt-env-installation was a simple matter of "apt-get install ... " and took just a couple of minutes.

Edit:
The repacking can be done with Windows and rcc.exe - I also wrote a repack.cmd for that purpose but I'm not sure about the origin of rcc.exe. Extracting and hitting "repack.cmd" should work to create a fresh.rcc and then prompt if you want to overwrite the facet rcc

[StevenH]

I've just discover this topic; i'm quite impressed by the fact that such a technology can be hacked quite easily by anyone. How is it possible?
I wonder what would be FLIR point of view/reaction ; i though that infrared cameras were controlled products...

[Macnasien79]

First I'd like to thank you guys for the great service you all are providing to everyone who owns a FLIR E4.

I bought mine couple days ago through Amazon.com and they shipped the unit super quick.
Look for the Seller Sales Store, can really recommend them. Outstanding service, perfect communication and support.
When i ordered they had 10 pcs on stock, from which one is mine ^^.

[hgg]

Wow!  Amazon had 5 in stock yesterday night, and now nothing!
Tequipment.net needs 10 days to order one.

[Fraser]

@StevenH

FLIR are a large player in the industrial thermal imaging market, they have not traditionally been working in the budget Consumer goods market, but began to enter it with the iX series. That series as also subject to 'user upgrade' prior to teh E4 release.  Consumer market users are more likely to 'hack' their new toy than an industrial user, and this may have been overlooked by FLIR. They just built the cameras as they have always done so, with little secuirty on the configuration files. That may well change since this event.

The Ex series are subject to ITAR regulations in so far as where they may be shipped, but they are not regulated in the same way as a medium resolution 30, 60 or 200 fps camera. At 9 fps they may be sold and shipped to many countries, with very little paperwork involved. The improvements that have been detailed in this thread are of no consequence where ITAR regulations are concerned as the camera is still a 9 fps unit. The resolution of 320x240 causes no concern to the US DoD and BIS at this low frame rate. If users began to upgrade their cameras to higher frame rates through simple configuaration changes, FLIR would be in breach of their responsibility to prevent such under ITAR approvals, and the brown stuff would hit the fan ! There is no public disclosure of such an improvement to the Ex series and it is expected to be 'locked down' in the hardware to prevent such. It is an ITAR requirement is that such a limitation must not be reversible by the end user.

As to the thermal camera industry response to this whole affair........ amusement would summarise it well. Those that I have spoken with are impressed with the work of those involved in the upgrade, and show little surprise that this has occurred. I suspect they have little secuirty in their cameras either, but the difference is that most of them supply to industry only. No one is feeling sorry for FLIR as they are big and 'bad' enough to weather the 'storm'. Be aware that other manufacturers do reverese engineer the competitions products to learn from them....that has always been the case in the manufacturing industry. FLIR's competitors were already aware of the 'secrets' within the FLIR products and , of course, within their own    No treachery is involvd in this case. Some clever Users have just used publicly available knowledge and information to enable, and add, functionality. That is why I prefer to call it an 'Enhancement' rather than a HACK as hacking can infer 'Black Hat' activity which is not something to be shouted about in polite circles.

[andy1read]

I installed tauchers beta3 menu hack last night, i followed the instructions, dropping the new flashbfs file onto the flashbfs on the camera. When I restarted the camera(removed the battery) nothing had changed. Looking at the new flashbfs file on the camera, the flashbfs folder that i moved, became a sub folder inside the cameras original flashbfs folder. So I deleted the extra folder, and dropped the settings folder from the new beta3 flashbfs into the camera flashbfs folder. This time the hack worked, i played with the menus and it all worked fine.
 This morning i was using the camera, trying out the new menus, went on the displays, i think i was on the small picture in picture . When the screen froze , and there were vertical strips about 3 to 4 mm wide, alternating  normal image strips and strips with distorted image(digital noise). I did a restart, and it was ok.
 Does anyone know what might cause this to happen, and any suggestion on what to do, to stop it happening again.
 
 Thanks

[QuantumLogic]

I installed tauchers beta3 menu hack last night, i followed the instructions, dropping the new flashbfs file onto the flashbfs on the camera. When I restarted the camera(removed the battery) nothing had changed. Looking at the new flashbfs file on the camera, the flashbfs folder that i moved, became a sub folder inside the cameras original flashbfs folder. So I deleted the extra folder, and dropped the settings folder from the new beta3 flashbfs into the camera flashbfs folder. This time the hack worked, i played with the menus and it all worked fine.
 This morning i was using the camera, trying out the new menus, went on the displays, i think i was on the small picture in picture . When the screen froze , and there were vertical strips about 3 to 4 mm wide, alternating  normal image strips and strips with distorted image(digital noise). I did a restart, and it was ok.
 Does anyone know what might cause this to happen, and any suggestion on what to do, to stop it happening again.
 
 Thanks

Probably just a random Windows CE crash.  That said, if it continues to occur, it would be a good idea to "undo" all enhancements you have performed and see if the problem goes away.   If the problem does not go away, then there could be a defect in the camera and it should be looked at by Flir under warranty.  Before sending in the camera for warranty work, you should remove any enhancements or potentially be denied warranty repair.

I have personally experienced a crash where I saw some very brief flickering purple sections on the bottom of the LCD screen followed by a Windows pop-up message telling me that the appcore.exe had crashed.  I shut the camera off by holding the power button down for a long time, then pulled the battery in order to force a full reset.   Has not occurred since, however I still expect to see random crashes once in a while just because it's Windows and there may be bugs in the Flir software (enhanced camera or not).  When navigating the menus I purposely slow down my keystroke speed in order to give the back-end software time to update the LCD completely so as to not cause "timing" related crashes.