FLIR One Gen2 failure investigation + FULL RESET method by Fraser

[schmiernippel]

At the moment i have borrowed the cam a friend so i can not make a photo. But just google "micro usb pinout". When you have soldered the wires on the usb, double check the polarity !

[exciter]

Hi,
buyed a dead F1G2 on eBay.
Had to reflow the NAND to have the orange LED starting working for now...
previous owner broke the black 4Pin Socket on the mainboard. This socket is used for 4Pin mobile phone connector.
I measured 1mm pitch but I don’t know it’s height since it’s gone.
Can someone please measure out?
Regards

[exciter]

Hard reset didn’t change anything. Got only the orange light, no charging led...
So I removed the AT91SAM, reballed the Chip and soldered it back.
Now the device is working as it should. You could clearly see that some solder balls didn’t made contact to the BGA because some contacts didn’t shine after removing. So after Nand (0.35mm) and CPU (0.5mm)  reball the device is fine.

[Fraser]

Exciter,

Excellent post 

I have had FLIR ONE G2 unit’s that also do not respond to a hard reset. I basically put them in storage until such time as I either felt motivated to investigate further, or harvested the Lepton core from them for other projects. I never did feel motivated to delve deeper into the F1G2 issues as I fell out of love with the design!
At one point I had around a dozen dead F1G2 units piled up awaiting my attention. That is when I knew the product has ‘issues’. No other thermal camera I had come across was so prone to failure or power related issues. I wonder if the F1G3 is more reliable ? I decline to work on any of these FLIR One unit’s now as they are not worth my time.

It is very interesting to read that there is a BGA ball flow issue as that helps to explain why there seemed to be whole batches of dud F1G2 units hitting the market. There was clearly a production line issue that was not detected. Some units suffer from battery or power management chip issues but this latest comment from you suggests that the F1G2 may also suffer from extensive BGA production defects.

Please will you detail the equipment you used to rework the small BGA components. I have hot air and IR BGA Rework stations. I bought the IR BGA Rework station to experiment with repairing laptop motherboards, specifically the North and South Bridge chips. Those are huge compared to the BGA components in the F1G2 ! On the hot air front I have both conventional sized hand pieces with various nozzles and various hot air pencils for fine SMT work.

Fraser

[Uho]

I watched two broken F1G3 from one batch. Symptoms of failure are the same with F1G2. They work after the controller warms up with a hairdryer.

[exciter]

Hi,
I use a Weller WSP80 soldering station and a aoyue int 968 hot air (waiting for a BST-863).
Additionally I have got a old PACE station with vacuum pump and desoldering iron.
For SMD work I use a old Zeiss stereo microscope with an old lamp stand.
I attached some pics.

[Fraser]

Exciter,

Many thanks 

Nice bench setup in your loft ..... I need to de clutter my work area as I find myself working on the dining room table at the moment ! My wife is none too impressed !

I love that you included the term “old” in your equipment details ...... I am of the view that “Old” is fine if it gets the job done  “Old”, originally expensive, can often be better than “New”, cheap 

Well done on the repair 

Fraser

[jldesigns.eu]

Hello Guys.

I've also bought a broken Flir one gen 2 (first one attached to the phone). After reading the post about resetting the module I thought it will be a straight forward but not exacly...

The symptom were in my case:
- orange LED always on (red and green bought lighten up)
- after holding the button for about 10s the orange light is going down, but after releasing the button it light buck up
- i saw a green light briefly go down for a split of the second after connecting the battery
- charg led is not lighting and the battery was not charged
- cam was not detectable by the phone

I've charged the battery externally. The reset procedure didn't work for me.

After reading the post bout reballing I've decide to give a shot to reheat the chips, so I've poured some flux on flash and man CPU, and reheated them with hotair. Of course I know it would not be permanent, but I deducted that the units were testes in factory, so a cold joints are pretty probable (especially since my unit was factory new condition) , and reheating could work, and it did work to some degree...

Now the camera is more alive:
- after pressing button the light goes orange, and then green is flashing (around 1s period)
- the camera is detectable by the phone, It reads the battery percentage, but no image from any camera
- the charging light is still not lighting
- if i turn it on (the green light flashes) and not connect it to the phone it truns off after some time.

Questions:
1. What would You recommend to do next?
2. Green flash meaning its booting, it should be solid after it boots properly?
3. Is there a serial UART somewhere on the board like in the case of Flir One Case (for iphone 5) like Mike showed in his video?
4. When raballing can You confirm is it a CPU and not Flash? Resitting both is 2x more risky. I've never did any reballing... Watch a ton of YT videos... but still not confident Is it easier when reball the chip with bought balls (not stencil)?
5. Maybe somebody have a tested working open hardware project for breakout board for Lepton, possibly if it straight forward to use/test it?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

===============EDIT===================

I've also verified that the battery is charging now - it draws around 500ma, but the charge led is off. I don't see any move on the shutter at any point.

[Fraser]

From what I have read, removing the CPU, Flash and power management chips is the best option as it would appear that there was a real quality control issue with the soldering of these components at the factory. It could be  caused by many factors such as contamination of pads, incorrect reflow profile or flux issues.

Re-balling such small components is not for the faint hearted. I personally use solder balls but others have success with stencils and solder paste so both techniques work. The solder paste is heated on the chip to create solder balls so the result is similar. More flux will be needed when attaching to the PCB of course.

I suspect if you remove the BGA chips you will find issues evident on the PCB pads, as others have discovered. The PCB pads should be cleaned of all residual lead free solder, re-tinned with leaded solder (I use LMP with silver) then cleaned again to create nice receptive pads for the leaded solder on the BGA chip. This is not a quick process, especially if new to doing BGA work (like me!) so it makes no commercial sense to undertake the repair. For you it is different and you stand a good chance of reviving the unit provided the solder balls do not merge under the BGA.

I understand that controlled hot air (not a paint stripping stripping gun) is adequate for these small chips. I just bought a Jovy IR BGA Rework station and will be testing it on some BGA tasks that I have waiting for it’s arrival. I may try it on the FLIR One G2 as I have some awaiting my attention. The Jovy may be a sledgehammer to crack a nut however !

Most Lepton breakout/dev boards that contain a processor are over priced in my humble opinion. The ‘dumb’ version is affordable but not as useful. I have yet to find a reasonably priced intelligent dev board for the Lepton 3.

Fraser

[jldesigns.eu]

Thanks Fraser.

I'm confident with smd till 0402, don't have an microscope, and only simplest and cheapest hot air station.

I'm gone give it a try, but have a question to exciter.
1. How to remove this uderfill? Heat + rubbing?
2. Should I do both chips at once or just CPU?
3. I don't have a preheater, would you recommend to get it or for this small PCB hot air is fine?
4. Any other advice?

[exciter]

Hi,

As far as I can remember there is no complete cpu underfill.
There is just the resin holding the chip in place. I removed it with a thin solder tip.
There might be a little bit of resin under the chip, but I had no problem removing the chip.
I also used a preheater but I was also able to remove the chip only with my hot-air station.
I started with the nand, but the fault was because of broken cpu  solder joints.
Would try to reflow the nand first. If the fault persists I would reball the CPU.
You need to remove the old solder from the board an chip as goof as you can. Clean the PCB and chip with MEK or alcohol. Use leaded solder balls for reballing because of the lower melting point.
Be sure all solder is melted before you remove the chip ( watch nearby components for melted solder, push chip from the side and look out for movement(may not work because of the resin)).
You will avoid ripped pads if you are carefully. Move the nozzle evenly...

[ftonello]

Anyone interested in a Flir One Gen2 that i f***-up trying to reball?
Or Should i send it to Dave, so he can do a video about it.
 

[Fraser]

I would be interested in it please

Fraser
UK

[All Seeing Eye]

FLIRONE's battery design is very stupid, and it goes wrong again and again.

[ftonello]

This is disturbing, because a plan to buy another one...Flir One is a pocket tool in my area...

[Robster69]

Fraser
Please can you let me know what hot air heat temp you used for removing the cpu and nand chips?
I have a preheater to help with the removal...

[Fraser]

Every brand rework station will behave slightly differently due to air flow, distance from chip etc. I strongly suggest you practice on some scrap boards before attempting rework on a F1G2 PCB.

I now use A Jovy 7500 Infrared rework station with proper heat profiling. Hot air was OK but for delicate work I prefer IR.

Working on the F1G2 is not for the faint hearted and there is significant risk of killing it good and proper !

Fraser

[J3SS3]

Hey all,
I've got a F1G3 with the dead battery issue (constant orange light, won't charge).  I've disconnected the battery: 0V, reconnected and the same.  Wondering if anyone has a source to buy a replacement battery (F1G3 uses a 3 wire battery, see image).  Maybe a new battery would do the trick?

Alternatively, what about running the wires out of the frame and using an external battery or power supply, kind of a DIY workaround to re-engineer the issue?

One more thing, I contacted Flir about this and since i'm out of warrantee they offered me $200 toward the purchase of a new Flir One Pro from their website.  I'd have to ship mine to them, when they receive it they provide the promo code.  Sounds a little like throwing good money after bad to me though...

This has been a really informative forum!

[Bill W]

Try a power supply charge on the battery - it must be locked out flat by the protection circuits.
Set 4V with a 100mA current limit.
Once it gets up to 4V then try back in the camera and see of it restarts, or follow the reboot guide up the thread


Bill

[Fraser]

I have a very dead F1 Gen 3 as well. It was bought as working but I got burnt by the seller as it is showing a solid Red led. This is a well known fault. It did appear to charge the battery as the battery got warm. My faulty F1G3 needs further investigation but I just cannot be bothered with it at the moment. I have a lovely Argus 4 and Seek Reveal Pro Ff to repair first

As Bill has stated, in your case I would try to charge the battery using a safe method, as detailed. The LiPo May have a locked out battery protection circuit fitted so you might need to gain access to the battery side of the protection circuit in order to put some charge into the cell and reactivate the output of the protection board. On occasions I have had to charge the cell and then MOMENTARILY connect the cell input of the protection board to the protection board output.... this somehow reset the lockout on the board. Worth a try.

I do not know of a direct replacement for the F1G3 battery, I managed to buy a replacement F1G2 battery on eBay that is now being sold as a compatible replacement from “Sino battery” for £12. No sign of a Gen 3 battery yet though.

If the battery cannot be revived you might like to carefully connect a 4V/1A lab power supply to the battery terminals Of the F1G3 PCB and see if the camera will boot from that supply (mine didn’t  ). If it does, some F1G2 owners have deleted the internal battery completely and wired the battery input of the PCB to the USB plug that connects to the phone. The camera is then powered from the phone. I would want to place a LDO regulator or a silicon diode in series with that power feed though to bring the voltage closer to that of a LiPo. You make such a modification at your own risk however and I have not done it on any of my F1G2 ‘patients’.

Fraser

[J3SS3]

Thanks!  To apply the charge would i have to do anything with the white wire? I'm not sure what that wire does.  Now to find a lab power supply  

[Bill W]

Thanks!  To apply the charge would i have to do anything with the white wire? I'm not sure what that wire does.  Now to find a lab power supply

No, just put power back up the red/black initially.
If that fails, as Fraser says try charging direct on the cell.

The white is probably a thermistor in the pack to allow the charger circuit to behave more appropriately.  See if it is ~ 10k black to white.

Bill

[J3SS3]

So it seems by "budget" power supply I've acquired has a lower limit of 0.6A.  I'm guessing that's too high a limit to attempt this safely, right?  I may have to give this further consideration.  Thanks again, all!

[Fraser]

You often only need to raise the terminal voltage of the battery above the lockout threshold So that the cameras charge circuit recognises the battery and charges it. You can use a 0.6A Current limit power supply on the battery but only for a short time to avoid overheating. Set the power supply to 4.2V with the lowest set able current limit, which you say is 0.6A. I recommend applying the 0.6A current limited supply output to the LiPo cell for 30 seconds and measuring the battery with a meter after disconnection. Repeat the process until the cell measures above 3V and you should be good to go refitting the cell to the camera and letting the on board charge circuit continue to charge the cell in a safe manner.

Charging a LiPo cell at 2C is not dangerous provided you watch the process and ensure the cell does not get hot. It will charge the cell quickly so care is needed. At 2C the cell would be fully charged in around 30 minutes and further charging would be risky due to overcharging effects on the cell. Be sensible and you will be fine 

Fraser

[J3SS3]

Hi Friends,
Just wanted to give an update (perhaps just for posterity) on my Flir One Pro Gen 3 with the orange-light-on-nobody-home issue.  Spoiler alert: no luck

1. I removed the battery (quick tip for those with this camera, lift up on the battery connector on the side opposite the wires to easily remove it).
   a. Battery read 0V
   b. applied 4.2V at minimum current limit with my budget power supply (stated as 0.6A) for 30 seconds.
   c. after 1 30 second interval the battery read 3.4V!
   d. plugged battery back to PCB
   e. now i can get the orange light to stay on while not plugged in to USB power.
   f.  it will stay in this state until the battery is drained (without USB power connected).

2. I tried the same but did 3 or 4 charging cycles and got the battery up to 3.7V
   a. same results

3. Attempted solution from Reply #25 (Fraser)
   a.  attempted the power-hold/usb-pull maneuver 3 times to make sure I was doing the right sequence
   b.  no luck, still at orange power light state
       - I should note that I too have the millisecond flash of the light after 18 seconds noted in Reply #23

4.   Applied 4v/1a from power supply to battery connectors on PCB
   a. orange light comes on
   b. appears to be in the same state as with the battery charged in plugged in or with USB connected

I am certainly not going to attempt any reballing or solder fixes as my skills in that area are more often applied to copper pipes with a torch.

I'm considering selling this one for parts on ebay and seeing what i can get, then possibly purchasing a Seek (currently under $200 on Amazon).  Or I may consider taking Flir up on their offer for a discounted new camera if I send this one in (might put me back in the same boat, but at least I'd have a warranty).  If anyone has insight on "scrap" value of this model, or the reliability of Seek (UW-AAA), I'd be obliged!

Thanks again for all the help and the "fun" project (trying to stay positive).