BAe / Lockheed 200/205/500 series cores

[Bill W]

More of a bookmark to link back to this thread that contains a fair bit about these cores despite the title

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/thermal-imaging/two-new-patients-inbound-)-scott-eagle-attack-firefighting-cameras/50/

205 series core image below

Used in a few Argus3 and other fire cameras around 2001

[Bill W]

and an image of the SCC500 series datasheet:

used in MSA '6000' series fire cameras around 2002 onwards

Bill

[Bill W]

Powering a 205 series core directly as 'volts in = video out'

The core has a 20 way Harwin M80 series connector for power, while data and video come out on the 80 way connector.  In the thread https://www.harwin.com/products/M80-8512042/ was suggested as being more available (these cores were all pre-RoHS).

Pins 1-3 are +ve, pins 4-6 are -ve battery supply.
Pins 7-9 are 'external +ve' and 10-13 'external -ve
Pins 17 and 19 need to be joined together, suspected to be for a low current enable.

The spec says OK between 4V - 9V, and as usual at this era it takes somewhere around 8W until the peltier settles, then about 5W.
Argus3 was 5 x NiMH cells.

Bill

[Fraser]

More information on the BAE SCC500 core may be found here:

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/thermal-imaging/scott-eagle-x-fire-fighting-camera-very-nice-unit-and-core-by-fraser/msg1308661/#msg1308661

Fraser

[Bill W]

More on the connectors for the SIM200.

The 80 way 'data' one was from 'Intercon Systems'  and described as:
InterCon 5756-140, 80 pin, 2 row SMT, 0.1" x 0.05"

for which the Argus camera used a 5662 type to mate with it.

Seems like InterCon have gone now, the only references I can find are here:
http://www.isiconnectors.com/mfrs/iconsys/iconsys.htm

So what was on it ?

Lots of 0V, so at least making provision for a ribbon cable attachment
Low numbered 0V on pins 8,14, 18, 34, 36

20/21 for a manual gain control pot (21+, 20 wiper, and 0V)
22/23 for a manual level control pot (23+, 22 wiper, and 0V)

30/31/32/33 for RS422 (TL.TH,RL,RH respecitvely)
36-73 digital data (all even numbered pins 0V, 37=Vsync, 39=Hsync, 41=CLK, 43=D0 etc to 73=D15)

75 analogue video (74 & 76=Gnd)

As for the rest I do not know, but we did not feel a need to connect to them for the Argus camera.  Some at least were for a keypad.
Digital out could be in several formats, for Argus3 we had it in greyscale 8 bit for which only D0-D7 are active.
Others offered seem to be a colour and a full 16 bit greyscale


I have got a few mating connectors (SMT '5662' type) if anyone needs one

Bill

[ArsenioDev]

Bill, what are the manual gain/level? Are those supported in the standard firmware? Got pics of the pinout positions for reference and/or the recommended pot values (or are they just vdivs?)

[Bill W]

As far as I can make out, the default is for button or data control of gain (or to set up as auto gain) and that switching to the analogue pots is a command option.

It is all available in standard firmware, not sure if/where the command set has made it to the public domain though.

Bill

[Bill W]

I found an old RS232 port bashing file that has some of the 200 series VOx instructions in it used when we were testing out the Argus 3 version.
I have that up and running now.

Not sure whether the codes have meanings, whether real values, 'values as text' or just random ASCII
They do come out OK as text, eg shutter = 8 0 3 0 [CR].

See if these work (given in in decimal) and I'll test and transcribe the rest. 
It works with 9600 baud 1 stop no parity

The core also sends a '33' (decimal) when it calibrates with the flag.

Function	Decimal	__	ASCII
Shutter	56 48 51 48 13	__	8 0 3 0 [CR]
HOT=black	56 48 68 65 13	__	8 0 D A [CR]
HOT=white	56 48 57 65 13	__	8 0 9 A [CR]

Manual gain and level are there by the look of it

Bill

[Fraser]

Nice work Bill 

The code set for that core could be very useful 

Fraser

[Bill W]

Four images, seeing how adjusting the gain helped.

These are taken on a fairly cold day (1°C), clear sky, looking north late afternoon, so some sun effects.

The 'auto gain / level' is , as usual, a bit overenthusiastic so I'd say images benefitted from lowering the gain a bit to show more detail.

Images A1, A2 are in auto, M1 and M2 in manual gain

Finally one with a modern ASi cropped to be similar FoV, and manually adjusted from the 14 bit raw data



Bill

[Bill W]

Now some images to show the 3 built-in colour options (other than greyscale).

There was also something about being able to build and load your own colour schemes, but I do not have the details of how to do that.


Bill

[Bill W]

Attached a spreadsheet with the codes used for the images above.

At a guess these are the 'public' ones that were intended for use through the inbuilt keypad interface or that a camera builder might want for external buttons or a menu system.

Bill

[hap2001]

Hi, I tried BAE 500 series from my friend and the picture is superb, how different are BAE 200 vs 500? Thanks.

[Logan]

Hi, I tried BAE 500 series from my friend and the picture is superb

Indeed. BAE500L - with only 160x120 - outperform most QVGA imagers by miles, even modern ones.
Including but not limited to: Raytheon BST, Raytheon A-Si, Flir TAU2, Seek 320... Compared in person.

It will be very interesting to see if BAE made any newer model, because the 500 series was around year 2000, and I wonder how their development went after that.

[Vipitis]

BAE picked up Fairchild, which produce the 1920x1200 core among others. sadly the Fairchildimaging website now just links back to BAE, but they had neat data sheets for all their sensors and cores. If you want to buy them and aren't a government funded military - there is Sierra Olympia (previously Sierra Olympic), which sell products made with Fairchild sensors like the VayuHD. Other products they sell use sensors from Leonardo DRS

[Logan]

Attached a spreadsheet with the codes used for the images above.

At a guess these are the 'public' ones that were intended for use through the inbuilt keypad interface or that a camera builder might want for external buttons or a menu system.

Bill

Nice work Bill.
Here's a PNG version for easier view.
So there should be more "non-public" commands? Do you have them?

[tske]

How to remove temperature gauge for BAE SCC500?
It take a huge area of the screen and is almost useless (while not firefighting).

[Fraser]

The SCC500 series cores do not have a temperature readout capability, so any system that displays such is doing so using an additional electronics package. The SCC500 serial command set contains no commands relating to temperature measurement. As such there is no easy way to turn off the function.

An option might be to remove any additional electronics package from the core and configure the core for analogue video output.

Fraser

[tske]

The SCC500 series cores do not have a temperature readout capability, so any system that displays such is doing so using an additional electronics package.

Thank you, but are you sure about this? There's no additional sensor like the BST cameras.

[Fraser]

No additional sensor required. The SCC500 outputs a choice of Serial or Parallel Digital pixel data as well as an analogue composite video output.

I have the complete SCC500 “Quick Start” Evaluation kit technical document set and there is no mention of temperature measurement anywhere within it, or in the cores serial command set (there would normally be a Celsius/Fahrenheit option if nothing else). It is possible that the SCC500 used in some cameras were custom models (BAE offered customisation) built with temperature measurement firmware, but sadly you have little chance of finding the command list for such a custom build.

If you provided more detail of the camera your core is in and pictures of the core, we might be able to tell you more, but a standard SCC500 would need an additional PCB or custom firmware for temperature measurement and graphics overlay generation. The PCB stack would tell us if additional electronics have been added to the core.

[tske]

Thank you, I cannot take a photo now, but it's a Scott Eagle 160.

[Fraser]

Standard SCC500 datasheet attached. It has a clear picture of the normal PCB stack in this core.

Fraser

[electron_plumber]

The SCC500 series cores do not have a temperature readout capability, so any system that displays such is doing so using an additional electronics package.

Thank you, but are you sure about this? There's no additional sensor like the BST cameras.

The core in my Scott EI 160 has a TMP36 nestled under the shutter on a flex PCB. So, I suspect it records shutter temperature and does compute/return absolute temp.

Standard SCC500 datasheet attached. It has a clear picture of the normal PCB stack in this core.

Notably, the little red/black/white harness bundle that connects the optical assembly to the PCB stack in that document is replaced by a flex PCB. Photos attached.

I have the complete SCC500 “Quick Start” Evaluation kit technical document set and there is no mention of temperature measurement anywhere within it

Do you mind sharing? I just picked up a broken Scott EI 160.

[electron_plumber]

A few notes on my (non-functional) Scott 160, for posterity. I bought this for $39 off ebay to salvage the focusing optics for another IR camera. I figured if I could get the unit to work, it would be a bonus.

• When I attempt to boot the Scott EI 160 by holding a front-panel button, the screen illuminates for about 5 seconds, then it turns back off. No splash screen/logo or anything -- just a light greyish white color. I draws 0.4 - 0.6A at 8.5V during the startup attempt.
• I opened up the unit and followed the power cable (which is coaxial cable terminated with an MCX connector; kind of an odd choice, but fine) to a little control circuit board with a bunch of power conversion and a PIC micro on it. The micro's VDD rail looks solid. There's no obviously failed power electronics. VDD is applied to the micro as soon as you power the unit, but the micro oscillator doesn't wiggle until you press one of the front-facing buttons. You have to hold the buttons for about .5 seconds for the micro to turn on and _stay_ on.
• During the boot attempt, a green LED toggles a few times on the SCC500 core. Also, the switched rail (annotated below) gets enabled. That rail propagates to a number of additional converters but gets disabled after the ~5 second boot attempt fails, and the micro also goes to sleep.

Didn't dig very deep. The display controller looks like its an out-of-house design manufactured in Taiwan. The Main board and pass-through are higher quality and are fabricated by TTM.

[Fraser]

Electron-Plumber,

Sadly the BAE documentation is covered in warnings about it being a controlled document set and not to be shared

Fraser