The replacement Li-Po cell for my F1G3 Pro has arrived. It looks to be a well made replacement and I have used Cameron Sino cells previously without issues, so it should perform OK. Sadly in my case (Red LED) I doubt that it will rectify the ‘no boot’ problem as that is more likely an issue with the BGA IC soldering 
I bought this new cell to fit if the unit can be repaired as the original cells are suspect quality. This cell cost me £12 delivered to the UK but it did take over a month to get here.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Battery-For-FLIR-One-Pro-/304231145528?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&_trksid=p2349624.m46890.l6249&mkrid=710-127635-2958-0
Fraser
When I studied this topic, I realized that the marriage in the printed circuit board was with Flir made in China. My instance was made in in Latvia or Lithuania - I don't remember for sure and there are no problems with it.
When FLIR decided to add a dedicated Consumer Technology division to their organisation, they looked at where to have the products manufactured. The decision was made to ‘farm out’ the Lepton based camera production to China. The Leptons shipped from the USA to China where they were installed in the China manufactured product. There is absolutely nothing wrong with such a production strategy provided the company trusted to make and populate the PCB’s maintains high standards to avoid a high failure rate. In my experience, it seems fair for me to say that FLIR were let down by their China based production partner when the FLIR One G2 and G3 were manufactured. I suspect FLIR saw the failure rates and realised that they had a production problem. At one point I was being offered bulk lots of 10 faulty FLIR One G2’s from a scrap/surplus seller who sold retail returns and rejects. He had a pile of faulty F1G2’s to clear. That cannot have gone unnoticed at FLIR. FLIR may have moved production back into Europe but I do not know that for sure. That would only be a solution if they selected a production house that could do better than the China based company. Some PCB designs that incorporate BGA IC’s can be challenging to build reliably.
FLIR have used Chinese design & production houses for their Thermal Scope range as well. The TAU cores were shipped to China for integration into the Chinese designed and built thermal scope chassis. Having worked on those scopes, some models are a decent design, whilst others leave something to be desired !
Quality PCB production in China is so commonplace these days that it is surprising that FLIR suffered this problem with the F1G2 and G3 models. Something clearly went badly wrong on that production contract.
Fraser
You guys are doing nonsense. Buy a voltage regulator and plug it in instead of the battery, as I did.
https://aliexpress.ru/item/4000259403990.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.264d33edswGqmU&_ga=2.143500917.1742143978.1617214605-1049604428.1586439898&sku_id=10000001054452173
Instead of a battery, I installed a downconverter 4_5-24V to 0_8-17V 2A at MP2315 500kHz.
I set the lowering to 3.9V (from 5v, received from the main USB Male connector (mico-USB, Type-C), by shorting the 5V and 12V jumpers on the converter).
In this case, depending on the smartphone model, the Flir One Pro application always shows the charge level of a non-existent battery at 70-82%.
I took + 5V from the control patch on the thermal imager board to the right of the USB Male connector cable (mico-USB, Type-C).
A pleasant bonus is that when you turn on OTG in a smartphone (if you need to turn it on in principle), the thermal imager turns on immediately, there is no need
press the power button of the thermal imager.
If you close jumpers 5V and 12V, the output will be exactly 3.9V
When I did all this, I did not take pictures, so there are no photographs. But everything has been working fine for a month already 3. The thermal imager does not heat up inside, and the current consumption from the smartphone is minimal.
No resistors are needed to simulate a thermistor. The main thing is that after revision, never connect voltage to the Type-C charging port.
Is there anyone in this forum who is located in the US and could do this for me? Preferably in the Philadelphia/South Jersey area? I'd buy the voltage regulator and pay you for your time.
You guys are doing nonsense. Buy a voltage regulator and plug it in instead of the battery, as I did.
https://aliexpress.ru/item/4000259403990.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.264d33edswGqmU&_ga=2.143500917.1742143978.1617214605-1049604428.1586439898&sku_id=10000001054452173
Instead of a battery, I installed a downconverter 4_5-24V to 0_8-17V 2A at MP2315 500kHz.
I set the lowering to 3.9V (from 5v, received from the main USB Male connector (mico-USB, Type-C), by shorting the 5V and 12V jumpers on the converter).
In this case, depending on the smartphone model, the Flir One Pro application always shows the charge level of a non-existent battery at 70-82%.
I took + 5V from the control patch on the thermal imager board to the right of the USB Male connector cable (mico-USB, Type-C).
A pleasant bonus is that when you turn on OTG in a smartphone (if you need to turn it on in principle), the thermal imager turns on immediately, there is no need
press the power button of the thermal imager.
If you close jumpers 5V and 12V, the output will be exactly 3.9V
When I did all this, I did not take pictures, so there are no photographs. But everything has been working fine for a month already 3. The thermal imager does not heat up inside, and the current consumption from the smartphone is minimal.
No resistors are needed to simulate a thermistor. The main thing is that after revision, never connect voltage to the Type-C charging port.
Sorry to resurrect this post, but I need some guidance. I have zero skill or knowledge of SMD (or any) soldering, but I really want to replace the battery in my Flir One Pro USB-C with a voltage regulator like Propretor did, because the battery keeps going bad. I've found someone locally who does SMD soldering, but he insists he needs drawings to do this job. Does such a thing exist? Can anyone point me in the right direction?
Thank for any help.
I started working like you. When soldering, I hooked the contact pad "3" and the contact of the capacitor "2" a little. Now I want to check the connections around. The Big Capacitor is closed and points 1,2 and 3 too. Is it supposed to be like this, or did I make a parasitic contact? Thanks for the answer
There were always times I wanted to pull out the FLIR - real quick - and I
always had to plug it in and charge it for at least ten minutes before use. The horrible design cannot keep a charge in a quiescent state. But no more. Problem solved. The (absolutely useless) battery has been removed from FLIR camera, and the user experience is easily 10x better than before.
Credit is owed to Propretor for this idea. But it took me a lot of careful reading through this thread and testing so I thought I would write a complete guide in a single post.
Here is how I did it with my FLIR ONE PRO for MicroUSB:
Buy a generic mini buck module.
Disassemble flir one from its casing.
Reconnect FLIR to mobile device and probe FLIR PCB test pads for 5v. There should be a 5v pad directly next to the flex PCB that attaches the male USB connector to the rigid PCB.
Unplug the FLIR flex PCB.
Unplug the FLIR Lipo battery. Clip the battery leads close to the battery, leaving you with significant length of wires attached to original battery connector. Ignore the white wire (battery protection thermistor). White wire and battery protection is NOT required for proper function. Red and black leads are +/- 4vdc.
Wire the buck module inputs to a benchtop PSU. Use 5v out from PSU to buck input. Check buck's output with multimeter. Very gently, adjust the buck V_out by rotating its pot until V_out is approximately 4vdc.
Remove buck from PSU.
Solder the battery plug's red wire to buck V_out (4v output). Solder the battery plug's black wire to the buck GND.
Using good, no-clean flux, solder a 30awg wire lead from the 5v test pad on the FLIR PCB. Solder the other side of this wire to the buck module's V_in pad.
Plug the FLIR flex PCB back into the mainboard.
Plug the battery connector back into place.
Connect your mobile device to the FLIR with USB cable. The FLIR should turn on automatically and be recognized and connected by the mobile app, without having to press any button on the FLIR PCB. The FLIR app will read 100% battery from the device.
When I first did this mod, the LEDs on the FLIR PCB would flash green, the device would be recognized by the FLIR mobile app, but the FLIR device would seem to boot loop. The camera would never be successfully pulled up, and the flashing green LEDs would cycle to red LEDs. I was worried I had somehow damaged the PCB or the microUSB flex connection, but no. What happened was my FLIR lepton module (the larger black square camera module) became slightly unseated in its socket during disassembly. I applied gentle pressure to the top of the black plastic casing to ensure a good connection, and then all was well. Phew.
During reassembly, wrap the buck in kapton tape. You can reuse the piece of black foam from the old battery to keep it from moving around inside the FLIR casing.
Also, don't forget to 3d print a USB-C plug cover (to prevent yourself from ever plugging anything in to the now-defunct battery charging port) and salute your useless battery before tossing it in the ocean - err...I mean recycling it responsibly, of course.
Has anyone tried to charge the phone+FLIR via the normal charge port after doing the 1-wire jumper for 5V between the two ports?
I am little nervous about trying it because I am not sure if the FLIR is actually doing authentication with the phone to deliver power out? Then the wall charger would be fighting with your phone's PD? Or would the phone be smart enough to then start charging instead?
@mklod
This is a brilliant write up and I'm going to embark on trying this too. One thing I did notice in your write up though was the description of the wiring differs from the image - specifically the two black wires into the Buck, they're reversed from the description. Would you mind clarifying which goes where please? I think I know the answer but would rather have my sanity checked first!
Thanks.
My battery also was a bloated mess, finally had to fix it. I actually managed to get away with replacing the battery with a capacitor, since I were too lazy to solder wires to the the PCB again (already got the 5V USB OTG to USB-Power wire mod installed). Only downside is, that you have to wait a few seconds till the camera "failed" to turn on automatically, because it sees a dead battery initially. Then you can actually turn on the camera normally, and it will see a 100% charged battery. So I guess the step down is technically still the superior solution, since apparently it turns on automatically right away? For someone feeling lazy this might be the easier solution, like if you already connected the power from the OTG port, or just want to power the camera externally and are too scared to solder on the main PCB.
I tested a 10V 220uF, which worked fine, but in the end used a 6.3V 1000uF cap I had laying around from salvaging.
PS: Ofc insulated the battery protection PCB and everything in (kapton) tape, before closing everything up.
Has anyone tried to connect battery+ and USB+ directly?
Yeah that's me
I've been removing the battery and applying a step-down circuit as per the pioneers' instructions because I was afraid of losing my $200 toy.
However, I was using a slightly different step-down circuit (with a rheostat) and discovered that it had been putting out 4.8V all along.
Okay, 4.8V vs USB 5V? Why not?
I immediately removed the step-down circuit and connected USB vcc and battery +.
Long-term observations will be needed, but so far, so good.
The app is reporting 100% battery.
I tell myself that if this goes wrong, I'll have a good excuse to buy the latest version of the thermal imaging camera. hahaha
PS: I've been using it for two weeks since I wrote this post. It's been working very well with no heat
