Unknown MicroIR Core.

[mevgheni]

Got an unknown MicroIR (BAE?) Thermal Core on eBay for cheap. It supposedly came from a Bullard Commander MX. Takes 7-14v and spits out what looks like composite video (only checked with a scope, no analogue monitors available). Judging by the size of the connector on the main board and some vague infomercials from bae, it should also be able to spit out digital pixels into an 8 or 16 bit bus, but after poking it with my scope, I couldn't find anything data-stream-looking on the connector.
Does anyone familiar with these cores know the pin mapping of the thing? Bonus points for serial control comms information.

Im too lazy to compress the images to fit them in the post, so here's the imgur album: https://imgur.com/a/Whzds5C

[Fraser]

Hi,

This thread may be of interest to you 

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/thermal-imaging/(repair)-help-needed-msa-evolution-4000/

Take a look at the BAE SCC205 data sheet that is contained in the thread thanks to nidlaX. Look familiar ? 

I only have the command set for the SCC500 but it may be similar to that of the earlier SCC200 series.

Fraser

[Bill W]

I think it is the slightly earlier Lockheed 200, used in several fire cameras of the time.

http://www.fire-tics.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=38

The design continued under BAe (who took over that bit of Lockheed) and became the 205 as Fraser mentions.  It is a 320x240 VOx.

You will not get digital and analogue out at the same time, it was factory set for one of the three modes (analogue / 8-bit corrected / 16-bit sensor ADC).  I suspect the video matrix timing was incompatible with the data stream.

You are looking at RS-422 to control it

Bill

[mevgheni]

Unfortunately, the document seems gone..
A bit of extra info though, under the MicroIR sticker on the control board, there is a MIP3 label in copper.

[mevgheni]

Thank you, but I still do not believe that getting the pixel data is impossible at the same time as the CVBS. The Conexant Bt866KPF chip on the main board that is responsible for the CVBS output is getting fed by an 8bit bus of clocked pixels. I really don't want to bug-wire into the chip thought...

[Fraser]

Which document seems gone ? The PDF SCC205 data sheet just downloaded to my iPad so works for me.

Fraser

[Bill W]

Thank you, but I still do not believe that getting the pixel data is impossible at the same time as the CVBS. The Conexant Bt866KPF chip on the main board that is responsible for the CVBS output is getting fed by an 8bit bus of clocked pixels. I really don't want to bug-wire into the chip thought...

You may get lucky at that level, I was relaying to you what Lockheed said at the time.  The BT866 is a YUV encoder, so the Y should be representative  most of the time.
The 205 did do over and under range colourising, the digital out (8bit) would be a pure 256 levels data stream, with separated colour on the other 8 bits.  This differs from the YUV needed for the BT866 which may have been double clocked for colour as Y+U/Y+V (I only had a quick look for the datasheet in detail).


Bill

[Bill W]

Found a BT866 data sheet, you may be out of luck.

"In 8-bit mode after HSYNC* goes low, the first pixel following CLK will be the
start of the 4-byte Cb/Y/Cr/Y sequence."

So if it is fed 8 bits, that is a mix of Y U and V in sequence at 2x pixel rate.