Flir One Gen 2 repair.

[McBryce]

Hi all,
    I picked up a defect Flir One Gen 2 for Android this week and having opened it the battery seems to be dead (mV reading). I haven't opened up the protection circuit yet to see if that's what has failed, but I was wondering: Should the Flir work at all with the battery removed? At the moment the device does nothing, even if connected to a PC via USB. Should the USB power the unit or does it need a good battery before I get any life out of it. At the moment I can't investigate any further as I don't seem to own a such a small safety Torx (It's a T5 I think).

Edit: The contacts to the battery (with battery disconnected) is getting about 1.7V when the unit is connected a USB port. The battery side measures open circuit when disconnected.

McBryce.

[Fraser]

The F1G2 cannot be powered from the USB input in the absence of the battery. You should get a flashing orange warning LED that something is wrong.

Fraser

[McBryce]

Hi Fraser,
     thanks for the tip. Unfortunately I didn't even get the flashing orange, but maybe the battery needs at least some power output to do that too. I've now confirmed that the battery is definitely not doing its thing. Measuring directly across the LiPo Cell gives me 3.72V, but the output from the battery protection circuit is 0V and it measures open circuit with a continuity test, so I'm now looking for a replacement battery or protection circuit before I continue any further fault finding.

McBryce.

[Fraser]

Interesting finding. We have long suspected that some F1G2 batteries are 'dud's'. It could in fact be the protection circuit. Just as a small side note. I have previously had a situation on protected Li-po cells where even charging the cell direct (bypassing protection) achieves a guide charge but the protection board remains in the 'isolated' mode. I have managed to re enable the protection board by connecting its output to its input briefly. Not shorting it ! But connecting positive battery input to positive battery output on the protection PCB.

I may revisit my latest batch of faulty F1G2 cameras and see if I can resurrect them. I kind of lost interest in the F1G2 ergonomics as I prefer my complete thermal cameras. The F1G2 is so inexpensive that there is little economic sense in my spending much time working on them for resale. To me they are just Lepton3 donors

Fraser

[McBryce]

I have a bunch of similar LiPo batteries from iPods / mini-quadcopters etc, so I'll "borrow" the protection circuit from one of those and see if that works. I've also noticed that the replacement batteries being sold for the iPod Nano 4G seem to be almost the same dimensions, but are 400mAh, so I may uprade to one of those later to add some runtime.

I would have also preferred a stand-alone Thermal camera, but I got this one (sold as defect) for less than 1/4 of the price of the Lepton sensor, so I thought I'd give it a try. If I can get it back working for the price of a borrowed protection circuit, then it's winner, winner, chicken dinner as Dave would say.

McBryce.

[McBryce]

So, I can confirm that the MOSFET on the battery protection PCB was the issue. Part swapped and the Flir One is back working as it should. An absolute winnner, winner chicken dinner if it wasn't for the fact that I just discovered that my mobile phone was compatible with the Flir one... up to last week when I inadvertently clicked "Yes" to "Do you want to upgrade to Android 8.0?" and now it's no longer compatible!!! 

Any suggestions for a very cheap phone that I can get just for the Flir?

McBryce.

Edit: Just discovered that it might be the Micro to USB-C adapter that I'm using that's stopping it from working on my phone. I've ordered some known to work adapters to see if that solves the issue.

[McBryce]

Hmmm, still not quite there with this Flir. It will switch on once or twice and seems to be doing what it's meant to: Orange for a few seconds, then flashing green and you can hear the calibration shutter clicking occassionally as expected. However, after a while it won't switch on again. To get it out of this I can either do the "Hold power key for 30 seconds while connected to charger" or disconnect and re-connect the battery. The battery is still fully charged after the reset and it will then boot as expected.

Any idea what could be causing this and how to stop it from doing this? I still haven't got a device I can connect it to, so I can't tell if it's actually 100% working when it does switch on.

McBryce.