Cairns Viper 320x240 Thermal Camera RS232

[13]

Hello,

I had an old Cairns Viper 320x240 thermal imaging camera module sitting around in my lab for a while and finally had some time to mess around with it.

From what I can tell it is a decent quality camera from the early 2000s that shoots 320x240 at 30 FPS. It outputs standard NTSC analog video on pins 19 and 20 of J5. The module its self comes from a firefighting unit which I found through this forum post: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/thermal-imaging/rs232-protocol-software-for-older-thermal-imaging-modules/

Of which the product brochure can be found here: http://www.fire-tics.co.uk/others/cairns_viper.pdf

While the camera does work I would like to see if I can get some of the onscreen functions such as the temperature scale to show up. In an attempt to configure the camera I found out how to communicate with it. On J5 there are two RS232 ports running at 115200, 8 bits, no parity, and 1 stop bit. Port one is connected to pins 3 (tx) and 4 (rx) and port two is connected to pins 5 (tx) and 6 (rx) of J5. Port 2 appears to do nothing while the other, Port 1, gives boot information as well as brings up a command line interface giving this message at each boot:

Windows CE Kernel for ARM Built on Aug 13 1998 at 13:49:05
ProcessorType=0a11  Revision=11
sp_abt=ffff5000 sp_irq=ffff2800 sp_undef=ffffc800
Sp=ffffc7dc
 |/-

+Gen:1.0
LDXLX: Xilinx loader operations completed.

Loading flash configuration...


Version - Software: v7.26 Xilinx: 3.13 BSP: 1.02


Firefighting configuration.


Initialization complete.

Unfortunately this is where my luck runs out. I have tried almost every command I can think of and each time the camera responds with:

> help


<HELP ? COMMAND UNKNOWN

As you can see above the camera appears to be running Windows CE Kernel for ARM. Using the internet I found a list of commands but once again had no success in receiving a response. To talk to the camera I am using a RS232 level shifter with an Arduino UNO acting as a serial pass through.

I do not have experience with Windows CE so I was hoping that one of you guys would tell me what stupid thing I was doing. Does anyone have any suggestions on what commands to send? Any help at all would be greatly appreciated.

13

[Bill W]

It is an early Lockheed VOx (Boston site ?) from before the BAe takeover in 2000. Earlier than the SIM-300L, 200/205 and 500 series

So early I do not have any data for it, we (Argus) were not shopping around for FPA cores in that era - still making and selling Pevicon cameras.

Bill