Flir E4 Thermal imaging camera teardown

[1187Shooter]

Hi all... new guy here... just wanted to say thanks for the wealth of knowledge here, and for the overwhelming support from all of the members.
I have a pair of E4s at work, one with 1.211.22 and one with 2.1.0 firmware.
I showed my boss this thread, and with his blessing, I got the older model up and running at full resolution and with the expanded menu... it is a night and day difference... like comparing my old Nokia flip phone display to my S6. My boss and I are very pleased with the results. The E4s were bought as a test to see if they could compete with the $5000+ Fluke cameras we also have. They are definitely a better purchase for our purposes, especially now...
Now to work on the 2.1.0 unit... from what I'm reading, I'll need to follow the 2.3.0 steps for this one.
We have lots of hard running motors, gear boxes, conveyors, rollers, etc. that we are constantly monitoring, and every bit helps.
I'd like to try to re-house one of the units in an enclosure that I can set in place to monitor a fixed motor or piece of equipment, so will be reviewing the teardown video again thoroughly... as well as the video recording portions of this thread.
A question about the crosshairs... can it be manipulated to change the shape/size etc. easily? Is it an image file overlaid on the display? If not, is there a way to overlay an image on the display? Seems to me that with a Windows based device it should be possible, but I don't know much about WinCE.
I've got plenty of other questions, but I'm going to get back to reading through all of the posts again to pick up what I missed the first time. I'm sure the answers to my crosshair questions are in there somewhere too.
Cheers!



Edited for pics... the first 4 are from the 2.1.0 E4, unmodified, the second 4 are taken side by side from the modified 1.22 E4/8.

[facesnorth]

@aniol:
The only difference i noticed is that, on firmware 2.3.0 the camera does more often recalibrating. Has anyone observed this behavior?
There is no 2.8.0 firmware to download. Also, there is no way back.
Before i did the downgrade, i downloaded all files over ftp 2.8.0. But i don't know, if this would help if i brick my device.

I didn't pay enough attention on 2.8.0 to notice as a comparison, but I definitely have noticed my E4/upgraded to E8 (downgraded from 2.8.0 to 2.3.0) does an awful lot of calibrating.  I assumed it was normal, but it can be a bit distracting.

[ixfd64]

Slightly off-topic, but the number of pages in this thread seems to have greatly dropped. Did someone do a mass deletion of posts, or is each page showing more posts now?

[Fraser]

Most non temperature stabilised thermal cameras need to do more FFC events until the microbolometer has reached self heating thermal equilibrium. Once at that point the period between FFC events should increase.

My temperature stabilised cameras have a much longer period between FFC events as the Peltier element maintains a small delta T with time.

It is possible to increase the period between FFC events on a thermal camera but this can be at the cost of accuracy and noticeable pixel drift. There is even an option to stop FFC events for video recording on some cameras.

The E4 is not badly behaved in terms of FFC event regularity.

Fraser

[Brumby]

Did someone do a mass deletion of posts,

No

or is each page showing more posts now?

Yes

Refer: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/important-poll-new-forum-categories-reorg/msg840777/#msg840777  (or somewhere around there)

[KCD]

Hello I am new here and found this by looking for Flir E4 I have a few questions that looking over the hundreds of pages of posts...

. I have E4 and am going to upgrade. Current Firmware 1.22. I did not download any tools or software as of yet. My understanding is to keep it at 1.22 then do the resolution and menu hacks?


Does it need to be windows xp - 32 bit?  I currently have 7 with 64bit Ultimate.


FLir Drivers. is there a certain one or universal?

Flir tools is there a version I need to use?

Filezilla version?

Anything else I am missing before I get started?

Thanks

[cuda12]

I have an original 1.19 camera  that works great and I did this a long long time ago, I never updated flir tools for fear it would detect my cameras new features and all has been good! Today I opened up flir tools and there is a O (zero with a line through it) on all of my library pictures. Is this some countermeasure by flir that finally got me?

[ElectricGuy]

I have an original 1.19 camera  that works great and I did this a long long time ago, I never updated flir tools for fear it would detect my cameras new features and all has been good! Today I opened up flir tools and there is a O (zero with a line through it) on all of my library pictures. Is this some countermeasure by flir that finally got me?

Measure point?

[cuda12]

I did change the measurement point in the camera is this what you mean?

[ElectricGuy]

I did change the measurement point in the camera is this what you mean?

post a picture

[cuda12]

I just took a few pictures and they show up fine in flir tools with all the information about the pics etc. But my old pictures all have a Zero with a line through it on all the old photos.

[cuda12]

I think I got it, flir tools is showing thumbnails of the old pictures it somehow has in it's data but there is no picture folder containing the pictures anymore since I had a hardrive failure a few months back. So I just went crazy thinking there was some new countermeasure but in fact it's a folder error. Thanks! I only found out because you said @post a picture@ and realized I had no way to do that.

[mahi]

Recently I got myself a FLIR E4 and with the information in this thread and fubar.gr I managed to enable both the high resolution mode and the enhanced menu. Naturally I had seen seen before and after sample images but I was still blown away by the difference. It's like an entirely different tool. Many thanks to everyone who contributed in making this possible!

A few observations that may or may not help others:

FLIRInstallNet.exe recognized the E4 as "USB Video Device" (in non-RNDIS mode), not as "FLIR USB Video". FLIR Tools had no issues to communicate with the E4, though. I could see the firmware version and serial number in FLIR Tools. I tried in 32-bit Windows XP and 32-bit Windows 7 (both virtual machines) and the FLIR device drivers were installed. I even tried to manually update the drivers of the USB video device in Device Manager but that did not work. The E4 was never recognized as "FLIR USB Video" which got me worried but in the end it did not matter. I managed to apply the hack successfully.

I could not make FLIRInstallNet.exe run the *.fif files (button greyed out) until I actually switched on the E4. After hooking up the E4 to my computer, the battery charging screen appeared and it was recognized as a camera and storage device in Windows - so I assumed the connection was okay - but FLIRInstallNet.exe refused to run the *.fif files. It took me a while until I realized I had to switch on the E4. The instructions at fubar.gr did not explicitly mention this, so maybe I did something wrong, but in the end everything worked.

My E4 came with firmware 2.8.0 which I had to downgrade to 2.3.0 first. I used the firmware package provided by matmoe earlier in this thread (link). Upgrade (or rather downgrade) instructions are in the included PDF file - read it if you don't want to waste time figuring out how to install a custom firmware with FLIR Tools like I did.

Just like matmoe and facesnorth I have the impression that the E4 calibrates more often after downgrading firmware 2.8.0 to 2.3.0. I did not really time the intervals before the downgrade so I do not have hard numbers. Keep in mind that there is currently no way back to 2.8.0 if you don't like 2.3.0! Nevertheless, the benefit of having the high resolution mode and enhanced menu far outweighs the higher calibration frequency in my opinion. In fact it's not just the resolution that increases - the thermal sensitivity does as well (<0.15°C for the E4 against <0.06°C for the E8) and the noise levels are orders of magnitude lower. Subtle details are much easier to spot and something like a hand print on a wall was much, much longer visible after the hack than before.

The boot screen now shows "FLIR Special Edition" instead of just "FLIR". This change came with the enhanced menu hack ("2.3.0_Menu.fif" includes a new boot image). Fraser posted more details what the Special Edition entails (link).

For reference, the temporalMk of my E4 (requested by Solare):

Code: [Select]

.calib.nrdp.ds250C_we_ap_fi_le.measureInfo.temporalMk double 12.863767
Before and after thermal image (MSX disabled):



(pictures taken hours apart so the temperature differences between before and after may not be relevant, but just look at all the detail in the after picture)

[tomas123]

Do you know a solution for permanent disabling the Flir logo (imprint)?

Code: [Select]

> rset .ui.userSettings.overlayLogo false

[Bud]

There are at least couple ways. One is to patch the logo graphics in the facet file to make the logo transparent (I believe this was what janekivi did in his menu upgrade package and you can see the result above). The other way is to unpack the facet file and edit desktop.qml to disable loading the logo. Then reassemble the facet file.

[tomas123]

Thank You for detailed answer.

Nobody answered to this question ;-)

We know, how to remove the flir logo in the E4 images.

But by using Flir Tools we get the flir logo back.

After using mediaextract (http://panzi.github.io/mediaextract/ ) I'm sure, that the logo is a PNG Byte sequence in the dll
C:\Program Files\FLIR Systems\FLIR Tools\bin\Flir.Modules.Common.dll

Code: [Select]

>build-win32\mediaextract.exe --formats=image "C:\Program Files\FLIR Systems\FLIR Tools\bin\Flir.Modules.Common.dll"
Extracting 0x00000000 ... 0x001a6120 (1.64871 MB) from C:\Program Files\FLIR Systems\FLIR Tools\bin\Flir.Modules.Common.dll
Writing 16.7119 kB to .\Flir.Modules.Common.dll_0017bf29.png
Extracted 1 file of 16.7119 kB size.

$ identify  Flir.Modules.Common.dll_0017bf29.png
Flir.Modules.Common.dll_0017bf29.png PNG 1029x353 1029x353+0+0 8-bit sRGB 17.1KB 0.000u 0:00.000

as attachment the extracted file
 
Anybody knows, how to replace the embedded logo png in the dll with a transparent image of same pixel size (but smaller file size).

Code: [Select]

$ convert -size 1029x353 xc:none 1029x353.png
A simple binary search and replace doesn't work (after then I have the same dll size but wrong dll checksum??)

[Taucher]

@LOGO:
Actually that TOOLS behaviour is expected as the tools are using the stored measurement data rather than the displayed imagelayer - this allows changing palettes etc. etc. etc ... but comes with a re-reaction of the visible image layer. I'm more worried about the tools always calling home and reporting metrics to google analytics

PS: The first logo-removal was with my menu-hack as I decided that it takes up valueable pixels just for nothing - and we already know who built the camera

[srpape]

Looks like there's a 2.11.0 up on the website now.

[OrBy]

Looks like there's a 2.11.0 up on the website now.

Yup! flir_ex_pn639_v2.11.0_update_pack.zip shows available.
So who is going to be the first to test it out?   

[Brumby]

Not me ....

.... but then my E4 is still in the 'dreaming' stage.   

[Sofia]

Flir probably done in version 2.11.0 anti downgrade 

[Chanc3]

Do FLIR post change logs anywhere? They used to have an RSS feed, but it is no longer used

[sonic.bionic]

Hello,

yep, i just tried to order new Flir E4 and seller told me that all new cameras are now equipped with 2.11.0. firmware....
So, i will have to wait to see is it possible to downgrade this firmware or not... 

[ixfd64]

Looks like there's a 2.11.0 up on the website now.

Here we go again...

[man_of_stars]

I have successfully downgraded from 2.11.0 to 2.3.0 SW and installed the hacks.

I ordered my camera Jan 11th and it took almost 3 weeks to arrive, apparently FLIR wanted to
ship with newest SW.

I used Win 10 for the downgrade, FlirTools version 5.3.15320.1002.
Hack was done with Win 7 Ultimate 32-bit laptop.

I don't have any evidence from the 2.11.0 as I was too excited to try if the downgrade will work or not.
Believe me or not, it worked for me Thank you all for the instructions and support!

I noticed that there is new version for FlirTools available v. 5.4.15351.1001 it was published 20th Jan, I did not dare to try that one.