Well my neat little FLIR i5 is off to a new home tomorrow. It was an eventful rehoming as during my extensive functionality testing before despatch I discovered a really weird bug that meant the camera did not always recover correctly from its sleep mode. A lot of investigation (more hours and effort than the unit is worth really) and I had enough proof of a firmware bug to present to FLIR Customer support for help. I was not hopeful as the i5 is now a legacy model. I had already tried the very latest firmware for the MK1 i5 and that just made the situation worse ! I had even tried grafting certain pertinent files from later MK2 firmware into the MK1 camera. No harm was done, but neither did it rectify the issue.
I actually resist messing with firmware in my cameras unless there is very good reason to do so, like in this case. I am very much an advocate of "if it aint broke, don't fix it". I know some newer firmwares address issues but I would only update if those issues or additional facilities are of interest to me
Later firmware can actually cause issues with a camera that was working perfectly well previously. I have heard that from techs who deal with several thermal cameras that I own. So resist that temptation to play with your firmware unless you have very good reasons to do so and the ability to revert to the previous version.
FLIR Customer support were brilliant. Within 16 hours of my submitting the request for assistance, they sent me a new Firmware that fixed the problem totally. That firmware is version 4.3.2 and is later than the version 4.2 found on the download page. It was a weird issue But I have now tracked down to an occasional I2C bus conflict that the new firmware addresses.
The other nice feature of the firmware update is that it erases the firmware memory area and installs a nice fresh Windows CE5 OS and camera firmware. There are no potential 'loose ends' from the previous firmware installations or my experiments
The calibration and configuration files are retained of course but they were not the problem.
I learnt a lot more about the FLIR firmware during that little investigation so the time was not wasted. most importantly, the camera now passes my tests so will be going to its new home, where I hope it provides excellent service.
I actually liked testing the compact i5, it is a very neat design with some good quality image processing present.
So long little i5 and serve your new master well
Fraser