Flir E4 Thermal imaging camera teardown

[Isaac-1]

HI All,

can someone please point me to the right direction? I have a brandnew flir e4 with 2.3.0.
- How can I backup the E4
- Where to start to apply the res and menu hack?

I tried to find the information in this thread, but as it is now 414 pages long it is a bit hard and I'd be happy if someone can point me to the right starting point.

Thanks
DJ

Unfortunately this is an evolving situation, and all the information is not neatly presented in one place yet, I was in the same place you are a couple of weeks ago, and had to spend a couple of hours digging back over the old messages to piece everything together to apply the hack.  Here are a few starting points for you, go back to page 1, the first message has been updated with some links to stuff you need to know, also look at the  most recent step by step instructions, I think I posted my quoted reply to them about 5 or 6 pages back.  The one thing that gave me the most trouble was finding the link to the v.04.zip hack, which I think I finally found somewhere around page 360-380.  Note I have only done the resolution hack, not Janekivi's menu hack yet, which is quickly evolving, so you will want to check recent pages for the latest version before applying it, I think version 5 of the menu hack is current as of today.

[FredB]

Hello Janekivi, I appreciate your work in this posts very much. You have done a lot of good work already for us.
I have a question. I studied the flir updat pack 2.3.0.

Did you already try to change the menu with '<ToolBar name="scale_scale_manual"/>' in the file 'toolbar-config.xml' to make a change button on the camera scaleMenu in stead of toggling from unlock tot lock in scaleMenu for manual setting of temperature? Or can't the menu not be changed so easily as I say or think?
In the flir updatepack 2.3.0 are more ToolBar names for the file toolbar-config.xml. Can they easily put into the camera or is this dangerous for bricking the camera? I think you did maybe already try this?
Fred

[lwi004]

Hi Janekivi,

I too like many others really appreciate yoru work and I haven't even got my E4 yet,

It's on it's way but will cross the Atlantic first etc etc etc , so won't be till the new year.

One thing which I woudl certianly appreciate knowing is how to make sure I don't BRICK the system and if I do, is it really a throw away the canera problem or do we mean brick the system UNTIL you return it to it's original state?

I enjoy hacking but don't want to lose my camera in the process.

Thanks

[djeans]

so, few hours later...

Thanks all.

res enhancement and color palettes ok now ( on 2.3.0 1.2L E4 )

Is there anything else what can be improved?
Zoom, PIP, manual set temp range ?

[Isaac-1]

All of those are still work in progress, with luck someone will figure out how to unlock them, it may be tomorrow, it may be next month, or it may be never.

[hackster84]

Hi there,

I have just acquired a Flir E5... Assuming I'm new to the world of applying hacks to firmware, what are the chances that applying the V0.4 hack to the E5 firmware would result in a bricked device?  I don't want to brick a $1500 piece of equipment - that would be difficult to explain to my boss...

Thanks for your advice!

-Chris

[hackster84]

I forgot to mention - it does have the V 2.3.0 firmware...

[djeans]

final question:

I have now "res enhancement" and "color palettes" on 2.3.0 1.2L E4 .

What are the ways to revert?
For Menu I used 2.3.0_Menu_5.zip. There is a 2.3.0_Menu_Restore.fif also include. I assume this restores the menu.
For res hack I used "python apply.py apply 192.168.1.2". It has created some backup files. How do I revert the res hack now? Do I need to copy over the backuped files anyhow?

Thanks in advance.
DJ

[ElSteverino]

Abot this E4 hacking - this is not for others to make money. Did you even read this
E4HACK-2 v0.4

I make here no money when I spend hours and play with it to find more holes to add some
features to it.

I for one want to say thank you for the work you have done. You have really helped unlock these latest versions of the Ex series and are helping them reach their full potential. I admit it can be frustrating seeing something for sale that has been made more useful in part due to your efforts. I've been there. I look at life a bit differently than most, I see situations like those as, not someone profiting off the work of others or trying to make a fast buck, but rather providing a service for those who don't have the knowledge to do it themselves or don't want to take the risk. I certainly don't think anyone is trying to claim your work as their own.

I'll admit, before I picked an E4 up on black friday, I looked at the offerings on eBay. An unlocked 2.3 E4, was going for about $1200. With eBay, PayPal and postage fees the seller was probably just breaking even. Was it wrong, probably. Should he kick something back to you and the community, yes. But IMHO, it is also wrong to "cripple" hardware through software just to earn a bigger profit, but I digress.

[tmbinc]

The main point is to prevent FLIR from cracking down on sites likes this. Hacking your own E4 for your own good is one thing, but doing this for money is something else.

It's interesting that one one side people claim that FLIR really profits from the hack (implying that they would make a larger profit if they'd just sell the E4 unlocked), but on the other hand accusing FLIR to cripple hardware with software to earn bigger profits.

In the end we don't know, and it's not our decision to make. I don't like crippled hardware. However it's FLIR's right to produce a product with whatever specs they like, whatever they seem fits the market. If you don't like it, well, then feel free to hack it. But I don't like this complaining about their "shady business tactics".

[EDIT: At least _I_ don't care if people make money with work I did. If I would, I wouldn't release stuff for free. So that's not the point. The point is solely to keep the hack "non-commercial". And while I understand a little bit how FLIR wants to keep the "more advanced" measurement features locked for the higher-priced products - even if re-implementing these algorithms wouldn't take more than a few hours for even a semi-skilled programmer -, and how they want to only build one sensor hardware, the most controversial feature I think is the noise generator. They spent extra development work on making the image look worse and making measurements less accurate. I think that's a different level than locking out software features.]

[Fraser]

Several times in this thread I have seen comments on its size and the difficult in seeing the wood for the trees. I have made such a comment myself and recommended a separate 'newbies help' thread which was created. This effectively separated the development information from the newbie "how do I do it" questions and lowered the 'signal to noise ratio'.

The first Post in this thread provides useful links for new arrivals.

This thread has effectively become a monster due to its own popularity and peoples desire for it to grow into the biggest thread on EEVBlog ever !. It is evidence of interest in the topic and the great work done by those who developed the upgrade paths. As such it needs to be treated a bit like a book that you really want to read. Start at the beginning and read the whole history of the E4 upgrade development. It is an interesting story on its own and an education to users and OEM's 

The 'payback' of the resolution upgrade is worth a users time. If that is not the case, the user should consider buying either an E8 or one of the Exx models with extra features. This might sound harsh but we all have day jobs and our lives are finite so going round upgrading E4's isn't really something I personally would wish to do and it does invite an issue with FLIR that they might wish to pursue as they did with 'via ebay' upgrade services.

The really hard truth is that if a user is not proficient at upgrading an E4 themselves by following the guidance in this thread, they should consider whether the E4 is the right tool for them. If they can identify a friendly tech who will do the upgrade for free then they have an option. Buying an E4 and THEN asking someone else for an upgrade service via a public forum is unlikely to elicit many, if any, responses. Such users could try starting a new E4 upgrade thread and operate a co-operative 'self help' service to each other. If you want the higher performance you need to put the effort in and not ask others to take risks by upgrading for money. There are likely good Samaritans who will do the work for free if they can afford the time. I support the Lowe HF receiver series in the UK for free. That is my hobby and my choice.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not clog up this thread with 'I am a newbie and need to be 'spoon fed' the process for upgrading an E4'. Put the effort in, read the thread fully and ask questions from a position of knowlwdge. It is far more likely to elicit a helpful response if you have demonstrated that you made the effort to read this large thread (Book  )

Aurora

[FredB]

About this E4 hacking - this is not for others to make money. Did you even read this
E4HACK-2 v0.4

            **** DISCLAIMER ****

- You do this on your own risk.
- By using this tool, you agree that you will
  remove the hack before selling the device.
- TO REPEAT: UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES you are allowed
  to sell a device that has this hack installed.
but what we see here- guy bought 4 camera and can now leave one for himself.
I make here no money when I spend hours and play with it to find more holes to add some
features to it. And this stuff is too for only educational purposes for using commands and knowledge
to get from machine what you want.
(my english is not very good but hope you got the point)

On page 392 on 18 novembre 2014 someone said:

"I also found that image quality vary from camera to camera on the E4 model. Out of the 4 I bought, two have "nice" images, but the third one I converted has a much sharper image compared to the first two (sold).  I noticed that only as I converted the third one after the second one was gone.
I haven't converted the fourth one, but I will soon. I intend to keep it for myself as a back-up, considering that the guarantee is, for all practical purpose, inexistant.
In the end, I will have gotten myself a camera (and a backup, shall I decide to do business with it) for free."

I think, this is what Janekivi means and he is fully right. And don't forget that in Europe, where Janekivi lives, we have no Zoro-shops with 30% discount on for instance Black Friday, so we had to pay the full price in Euro's (about Euro 1200, this is $ 1.470 !). This is more than 2 times the price that several newbees in this forum did pay. I know of course they can't do anything about this. It is our own decision to buy the camera. But.....it is a little bit frustrating that these guys want to change their cameras within five or better yet two steps without taking the trouble of reading some or more pages in this thread. The only goal/purpose seems to change their camera as soon as possible into a camera with the possibilities of an E8. I think these are the points.
 
I by myself are a newbee too.  But I first did read all 400 and more pages of this thread before I did the upgrade all by myself. I invest my time (for about 5 evenings) in it. I found all the needed files, copied them to my computer and did the upgrade. And of course it was a little bit scarry, but there are enough pages with a good instruction manual to do the changes, so be brave and give it a try after reading enough. I am not an IT-man and I could do it. 
I'm not a native English speaker too so forgive me my language errors.
 

[yogort1]

I've downloaded janekivi's 2.3.0_Menu_5.zip file and installed it on my E4. Thanks for the extra palettes  I wonder if there is a possibility to unlock the zoom option. Janekivi said that there is a telnet command 'zoom - rls .caps.config.image.zoom'. This will add zoom option in menu?

For zoom we need at least two things: in conf.cfc must be
.caps.config.image.zoom.maxFactor double (number other than 1) - this is easy, I know pattern and can edit it
.caps.config.image.zoom.enabled bool (false must be turned to _true) - not so easy
Hackers can edit conf but they is not cooperative and answer no letters but I can't stop and try this my own way-
with notepad and calculator.

Unfortunately I don't understand the last sentence. Could you please rephrase it?
janekivi, at the moment seems like you're the only one who is actually doing something towards enabling the zoom option. If you describe what exactly is the problem with the zoom option, then maybe we all could help you with this process and give you some advice on how to overcome some problems. I'm sure that this thread is visited by people who could actually have some good ideas

[pomonabill221]

Several times in this thread I have seen comments on its size and the difficult in seeing the wood for the trees. I have made such a comment myself and recommended a separate 'newbies help' thread which was created. This effectively separated the development information from the newbie "how do I do it" questions and lowered the 'signal to noise ratio'.

The first Post in this thread provides useful links for new arrivals.

This thread has effectively become a monster due to its own popularity and peoples desire for it to grow into the biggest thread on EEVBlog ever !. It is evidence of interest in the topic and the great work done by those who developed the upgrade paths. As such it needs to be treated a bit like a book that you really want to read. Start at the beginning and read the whole history of the E4 upgrade development. It is an interesting story on its own and an education to users and OEM's 

The 'payback' of the resolution upgrade is worth a users time. If that is not the case, the user should consider buying either an E8 or one of the Exx models with extra features. This might sound harsh but we all have day jobs and our lives are finite so going round upgrading E4's isn't really something I personally would wish to do and it does invite an issue with FLIR that they might wish to pursue as they did with 'via ebay' upgrade services.

The really hard truth is that if a user is not proficient at upgrading an E4 themselves by following the guidance in this thread, they should consider whether the E4 is the right tool for them. If they can identify a friendly tech who will do the upgrade for free then they have an option. Buying an E4 and THEN asking someone else for an upgrade service via a public forum is unlikely to elicit many, if any, responses. Such users could try starting a new E4 upgrade thread and operate a co-operative 'self help' service to each other. If you want the higher performance you need to put the effort in and not ask others to take risks by upgrading for money. There are likely good Samaritans who will do the work for free if they can afford the time. I support the Lowe HF receiver series in the UK for free. That is my hobby and my choice.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not clog up this thread with 'I am a newbie and need to be 'spoon fed' the process for upgrading an E4'. Put the effort in, read the thread fully and ask questions from a position of knowlwdge. It is far more likely to elicit a helpful response if you have demonstrated that you made the effort to read this large thread (Book  )

Aurora

The one thing I really enjoy about your postings is your honesty and down to earth views.
If only the newbies would READ them!

What I can see from the newbies postings is a sort of panic.... I bought this things, NOW I need the baby steps given to me.  (problem is, the steps ARE in this thread, sometimes multiple times... all that needs to be done is to read and use the search to find them)!

Just reading through the thread is a very good look at the history of the Ex series and the knowledge that has been learned by digging into the firmware, and what people have discovered.... maybe it should be a required class course in school!!!!   

One thing that does bother me is sometimes the lack of spelling checks and grammar.

I know not everyone speaks English as their primary language, and that they may have problems with grammar and spelling, but some posters need to spend a little more time and re-read their posts and correct their errors... it does make it hard to read.

Thank you for your "words of wisdom" and common sense!

[pomonabill221]

I have noticed in a lot of posts that some say... "on page 278, you will find....".
This is usually a reference to information that a previous poster asks about.

Only problem with this reference is, what if a reader has his forum preferences set to display 50 posts per page?!?!
I have this set so I am not constantly going to the next page... just more convenient for me, and possibly others as well.

SO the latest page, latest post is not on page 4xx, but 145.  NOW the reference to a particular page doesn't mean anything and is not accurate.

It would be ALOT more accurate to actually mention the post number(s) instead, as these don't change.

Just a thought to ponder.....

[janekivi]

Ok. What I like to say is - let's talk about electronics here. What forum this is? Where, how cheap,
after week I get my camera and then I need help for first steps... And no word about money!
This is hobby and with your stuff you can hack how much you want and no one lost money
because we do not buy more expensive camera anyway. We only buy them more and play
what games we like.

With my paper and calculator it took only 2 days and I can too enable zoom now.
This wasn't that hard because of clues what mr tmbinc left and because I can read.
What was first? Writing or reading? Here I see writing is first : )
I am not hacker, thats why this took so long. I repair usually for free all kind of things and can't
watch broken stuff. Flir make camera and broke this before selling it with lower price and name.

[Emoticon]

Installed menu .5 hack and modified the .rsc file., Followed the instructions and everything works good here including the manual range setting with e4 2.3.0 1.2L. Strangely in .4 I couldn't get the FLIR logo to disappear, but after installing .5 its gone and appears to stay gone this time. Thanks!

[Isaac-1]

Ok, just to join in on this latest elitist anti newbie conversation, I just recently started participating in this thread after buying a used E4, however I have been following it off and on for over 6 months.  In a way I think I can see both sides of this, as a new E4 owner looking to upgrade its performance, I would like to find reasonably clear instructions on how to do this, and to be honest there are not any, a few people have tried to compile a rough step by step, but give no reference into how to do this with steps like install the v0.4.zip hack....  The problem is as a new owner one has to then go spend hours locating this zip file, and this assumes they have the skills to know that to do with it when it is found.  The other problem is these so called step by step instructions get get buried dozens of pages back from the current page, and get out of date.  The end result is you have to be at least part way into the "in crowd" to perform the hack, you get there by pouring over hundreds of pages of messages, going back and forth within the thread, filtering out a lot of junk, and out dated information, and once you get done you find that the necessary information could have easily been compiled into a one page post that included links not just obscure references to a handful of files.  If such a reference, perhaps in the form of a wiki, or locked thread existed then maybe we could do away with so many newbie where do I start messages.  I also don't blame the newbies for asking, I posted a similar sort of question a few weeks ago, but only after reading hundreds of messages in this thread, after all these people have spent hundreds of dollars on an E4 and don't want to turn it into a brick due to lack of information..

Now can we please stop arguing over what dues people need to pay to participate in this thread, give the newbies a reasonable and up to date real step by step guide that is linked off of message number 1, and get back to exploring the workings of the E4.  I had planned to explore the dates on the files in my 1.2L updated to 2.3.13 E4 this afternoon, but instead I find myself spending my time reading over all this junk, and writing the above message.

[mikeselectricstuff]

I have noticed in a lot of posts that some say... "on page 278, you will find....".

Only problem with this reference is, what if a reader has his forum preferences set to display 50 posts per page?!?!

+1
Page numbers are meaningless. And even if it was consistent,  finding one post on a page of 50 is hardly trivial

[Fraser]

@Isaac-1

Nicely volunteered   

I look forward to seeing your concise and informative new thread detailing how to upgrade the various versions of E4. I started and supported the "E4 Useful information thread" for a similar reason but I am not permitted to detail hacking techniques due to employer restrictions.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/reviews/flir-e4-the-useful-information-thread/

I believe I have been quite generous with my time in that thread and helpful to many readers.

How many people hack their E4 after getting help here? I have to wonder why a concise and detailed upgrade thread has yet to be started by at least one of them to help others. Hmmmm ?

There is no elitist element in my comments, only common sense and good manners 

Aurora

[yf025]

cool    menu hack done ! I just found that connection timeout can be fixed by disable and enable flir device……100% success rate. No need for reboot e4 or PC 

[yf025]

Ok. What I like to say is - let's talk about electronics here. What forum this is? Where, how cheap,
after week I get my camera and then I need help for first steps... And no word about money!
This is hobby and with your stuff you can hack how much you want and no one lost money
because we do not buy more expensive camera anyway. We only buy them more and play
what games we like.

With my paper and calculator it took only 2 days and I can too enable zoom now.
This wasn't that hard because of clues what mr tmbinc left and because I can read.
What was first? Writing or reading? Here I see writing is first : )
I am not hacker, thats why this took so long. I repair usually for free all kind of things and can't
watch broken stuff. Flir make camera and broke this before selling it with lower price and name.

God! you can enable 2.3 zoom now?    Is it possible to release the file or method now? THX!

[Bud]

Now can we please ... give the newbies a reasonable and up to date real step by step guide that is linked off of message number 1,

Please do. Also publish information in the newspapers, run an ad on television, post on facebook and youtube, then watch half a dozen newbies joining a week saying "I have no clue where to start give me step by step instructions "

[Matthieu]

Hello

Yesterday i will test for upgrade my flir E4 2.3 to E8 but when i used set_permantly-RNDIS.fif (find in e4hack3c in this tread) i can't connect me to my E4 with 192.168.0.2 and i can't remove RNDIS because he is not connect ....
I think i forget to make something but i don't know what.

I need your help
Thanks

[yogort1]

Hello

Yesterday i will test for upgrade my flir E4 2.3 to E8 but when i used set_permantly-RNDIS.fif (find in e4hack3c in this tread) i can't connect me to my E4 with 192.168.0.2 and i can't remove RNDIS because he is not connect ....
I think i forget to make something but i don't know what.

I need your help
Thanks

Did you install drivers from support.flir.com? In your device manager Flir should be listed as a network adapter while it is in RNDIS mode.