The idea behind starting this thread was to highlight the challenges that we, as members of a public forum, face when discussing a technology that has 'supply and information' restrictions applied to it by powers with the ability to punish those who breach said restrictions.
I did not, and do not, want this thread to cause a rift between forum members as all are entitled to their opinions. I am hoping that this thread will act as guidance or a mild warning regarding certain actions involving discussion of some types of thermal imaging device.
I reverse engineered the FLIR PM570 in order to better understand its design and to repair a faulty camera. It was 3 months of hard work and I am proud of achievement. That pride could get me into trouble though if I had been unaware of the restrictions on the technology and published the complete schematic diagrams on this forum. I am by no means certain that I would have been pursued by FLIR and/or the US Government for such an act. But would I wish to risk such ? In my case no. In truth the schematics do not show the whole story as FPGA/CPLD configuration files and system firmware are not made available. All the schematics actually show is basically an 'AMIGA 520ST like' topology with some I/O 'bolt-ons', and a dedicated video processor board. Not rocket science, but the restrictions on sharing deep technical detail on such thermal cameras prohibits me releasing such into the public domain. I obey the laws of my country.
We live in an imperfect world and sadly where technology is considered a potential aid to 'enemies of the state', it often has restrictions applied to it. As has already been highlighted by Ben321, this forum still manages to discuss thermal imaging camera technology, and its improvement, without breaching any Government regulations. It is true that FLIR would rather this forum had not given birth to the Ex series camera upgrade, but nobody got pursued in court and no 'take down' notices were issued to Dave.
It will be noted that any discussions regarding how to increase the frame rate on the Ex series, or their kin, normally gets a quick warning from either me or another forum member regarding the issues of releasing such an upgrade into the public domain. Whilst I am aware of how difficult it would actually be to circumvent the frame rate restriction, I would not put it past the clever membership of this forum to work out a way if they applied their mind to the problem. Those with that skill set recognise the issues surrounding such an 'upgrade' though. Hence it has not been pursued on this forum.
This is a great forum and this Thermal Imaging Sub Forum is unique on the internet. No one wants to spoil that but we do need to be responsible in our discussions. There is much that can be discussed without concern to the 'authorities' so we have some great threads here. Long may it continue
Fraser