Flir E4 Thermal imaging camera teardown

[Zucca]

I totally agree with QuantumLogic. I had the same experience with the "appcore.exe" crash.

the flashbfs folder that i moved, became a sub folder inside the cameras original flashbfs folder

Could it be a human error? That's why I use Total Commander and I stay away from Windows Explorer.

[Taucher]

@andy1read
I suppose you did remove the battery after applying the menu hack
.. was your Ex hooked to USB for a longer time?

I left mine for some days (untouched) and when powering it up I had vertical banding that seemed to be originating from the LCD (not visible on captured images or in VLC) - also there was some ghosting of the FLIR logo after I left the camera to settle without battery for a while the banding got better, but is still present.

Right now I put the cam on power-cold-turkey (offline without battery) to let drain away all e-potentials.

[Taucher]

I totally agree with QuantumLogic. I had the same experience with the "appcore.exe" crash.

the flashbfs folder that i moved, became a sub folder inside the cameras original flashbfs folder

Could it be a human error? That's why I use Total Commander and I stay away from Windows Explorer.

It's simple: one has to drag & drop FlashBFS into the camera-root, not onto the other FlashBFS folder as that would be interpreted as "copy into that folder"

[scientist]

Courtesy of Registax:

Note: Not done with an E4. All thermal.

[hgg]

Is there a chance that when you order an E4 now, you will receive a version that is locked and
unhackable?...

[andy1read]

@Taucher
It wasn't connected on the USB for very long, about half hour.I did remove the battery after the hack.
By dropping the Settings folder into the FlashBFS on the Camera, that should do the same as dropping the FlashBFS into the camera root, shouldn't it?
   I've been using the camera for half an hour , since I got home from work, and its been working without any problems.  Hopefully its a one off glitch, should I remove the battery and leave out for a while?
 You ( and anyone else involved ) have done a nice job with the menu hack, didn't realise how much the Flir logo got in the way,until it was gone. Don't understand why Flir would put a logo on the screen .

[andy1read]

Is it possible to connect the E4 to an Android device,using an OTG cable, and use it on Flir tools mobile?
Is it only possible to use Camera's that have wifi , with the App?

[psycho0815]

Is there a chance that when you order an E4 now, you will receive a version that is locked and
unhackable?...

i Just got mine a weeek ago and it still had the hackable 1.19.8 fimrware, but sure in theory that can always happen, bur honestly i don't see why flir would care.
For Example, i bought an E4 basically because of that hack, but i would never ever  bought an E8 and propably not even an E4 without the hack. And professional user will buy an E8 anyway just to be sure, so i dont see much point in locking uo the firmware, but you never know.

[hgg]

I think I will take my chances.
valuetesters.com have a 4 to 5 week backorder...

Difficult to find one right now.  Yesterday 6 E4s disappeared from amazon.com in a matter of hours!

[daves]

Note: I made my app public, free to all. See: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/flir-e4-thermal-imaging-camera-teardown/msg350556/#msg350556

This is my contribution as reward for other cool stuff developed here - hack, menu, scripts... Thank you.

[Fraser]

@daves

Thank You 

[pomonabill221]

Thank you for YOUR hard work and sharing with us!

[mikeselectricstuff]

I think I will take my chances.
valuetesters.com have a 4 to 5 week backorder...

Difficult to find one right now.  Yesterday 6 E4s disappeared from amazon.com in a matter of hours!

Tell the dealer your order is conditional on it having a hackable firmware version, or guarantee refund if not (before they ship) - most dealers are aware of it.

[ixfd64]

I rewrote Tomas123's flir.php for batch process and added some more functions. I will post new versions only here, as update.

Any plans to make the source code available as well?

[jlr134]

I think I will take my chances.
valuetesters.com have a 4 to 5 week backorder...

Difficult to find one right now.  Yesterday 6 E4s disappeared from amazon.com in a matter of hours!

Tell the dealer your order is conditional on it having a hackable firmware version, or guarantee refund if not (before they ship) - most dealers are aware of it.

Tequiptment has a 5 or 7 day return policy for any reason with no restocking fee ,(ask them ) thats one reason I went with them (the discount didnt hurt0

[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.

Unfortunately, it was the laser distance meter.  Oh well, I guess I'll have to finish measuring my house for my 3D printed model now.

[pomonabill221]

I did more testing on the battery and laptop connection...
first, like I said before, the +5 from the laptop MUST be connected to the E4 for the USB connection to work.
sooooo...
With a partially discharged battery, I measured the battery current and the +5 USB current with the camera on.  (I took the battery compartment apart and broke into the -V side of the battery and inserted an ammeter).

With the camera on:  110mA to the battery and 611mA from the laptop.

 The current does jump around and doesn't seem to reduce after time like Mike mentioned MIGHT happen due to the heater... rats!  Also, when the shutter operates the current increases to about 815mA for about 1 second.  Also i had the brightness on the backlight on high for worst case.

The sampling rate on my dvm isn't quite fast enough but I did do several manual cals and get the highest reading several times.  I also used the 10 amp scale for the lowest burden voltage I could, otherwise the E4 would shut off.

With the camera off and the backlight on to display the battery charge (left/right joystick buttons pressed): 407mA to the battery (it had already partially charged) and 590mA from the laptop.

With the backlight off: 357mA to the battery (charged up a little more) and 440mA from the laptop.

The charging seemed to quit at about 110mA into the battery and the E4 went into OFF (0 current).

One other thing I noticed is the displayed charge current and the actual current into the battery is quite a bit off..... IE... 416mA indicated and 370mA actual and 163mA indicated and 110mA actual.
I would have thought that it would be more accurate than this.

I might make up an external battery box for the camera when using portable because this would really reduce the run time of a laptop/phone/tablet since the E4 would be getting it's power from the device!

[pomonabill221]

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.

Unfortunately, it was the laser distance meter.  Oh well, I guess I'll have to finish measuring my house for my 3D printed model now.

I opted for the borescope and sent it to my father as I already have one (HarborFreight no less).
I also have a Bosch laser tape measure and it really is handy and accurate!  You will probably like yours!

[hgg]

I think I will take my chances.
valuetesters.com have a 4 to 5 week backorder...

Difficult to find one right now.  Yesterday 6 E4s disappeared from amazon.com in a matter of hours!

Tell the dealer your order is conditional on it having a hackable firmware version, or guarantee refund if not (before they ship) - most dealers are aware of it.

I haven't tried that yet.  They already giving me trouble to ship it to US...
valuetesters told me they don't know the firmware until they receive the new units and this
will be after a month or so.

I asked tequipment yesterday for the firmware version I will receive, but no reply yet.
They need a week to deliver.  Let's hope that they will not lock the firmware.

A firmware downgrade would be a nice workaround I think.
If you are able to upload new firmware updates, then why not older ones?...
Has anybody tried that?

[Taucher]

@Taucher
It wasn't connected on the USB for very long, about half hour.I did remove the battery after the hack.
By dropping the Settings folder into the FlashBFS on the Camera, that should do the same as dropping the FlashBFS into the camera root, shouldn't it?
   I've been using the camera for half an hour , since I got home from work, and its been working without any problems.  Hopefully its a one off glitch, should I remove the battery and leave out for a while?
 You ( and anyone else involved ) have done a nice job with the menu hack, didn't realise how much the Flir logo got in the way,until it was gone. Don't understand why Flir would put a logo on the screen .

@copying folders: yes - and that's basic OS handling - I guess that one is covered by "advanced users"
@Menu hack - I'm somehow tempted to tweak the temperature-scale to be more subtle

[Taucher]

Update on LDC-banding:
The banding seems to go away when the screen is showing WHITE (saturating) - just set the TIC to "manual temp" and lower the scale until anything is white... seems to help a lot

Attachment: How it looked when "banding" (enhanced image, zoom unaffecting the display)

[mikeselectricstuff]

A firmware downgrade would be a nice workaround I think.
If you are able to upload new firmware updates, then why not older ones?...
Has anybody tried that?

If one of the  purposes of a software change  is to stop the hack, then I'm sure they would have thought of that. However the fact that a couple of months and many hundreds, probably thousands  of units later they haven't done anything suggests they're not too bothered, and may actually be quietly glad of the extra sales and market share. With the hack, anyone would be nuts to buy any other 9fps TIC on the market. 
Stopping it now would do little but piss people off and benefit their competitors.

[grumpydoc]

Stopping it now would do little but piss people off and benefit their competitors.

I suspect their best bet is to make it a little harder, but not try too hard to prevent it completely 

[hgg]

A firmware downgrade would be a nice workaround I think.
If you are able to upload new firmware updates, then why not older ones?...
Has anybody tried that?

If one of the  purposes of a software change  is to stop the hack, then I'm sure they would have thought of that. However the fact that a couple of months and many hundreds, probably thousands  of units later they haven't done anything suggests they're not too bothered, and may actually be quietly glad of the extra sales and market share. With the hack, anyone would be nuts to buy any other 9fps TIC on the market. 
Stopping it now would do little but piss people off and benefit their competitors.

You are probably (and hopefully  ) right.

[andy1read]

@taucher
 Do you know what dictates the max and min temps on the scale bar when in auto ?  I thought it went from the coldest to the hottest temp that were in the display. But thats not the case.
 In the auto setting, if i point it at a wall which only varies by 1 or 2 degrees ,  if the center reading is 15.5 degrees , the scale bar ranges from around 10 to 21 , which means the display ends up being a bright yellow/ orange.  If the scale was closer to the min and max temps in the display, this would show more colour detail. I've noticed there always seems to be aleast 10 degrees between the min and max.
 Thanks to your menu hack, in manual this can be overcome.
 I cant find anything in the menus which can adjust the auto ranging.