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Medicore IRIS-A - An interesting Korean camera found on the used market

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Fraser:
I still occasionally look for interesting thermal cameras on eBay and, as I have stated previously, I am expecting some medical cameras to appear on the secondary market due to the changes in approach to dealing with the Coronavirus pandemic. I found just such an interesting camera on eBay the other day. Why is it interesting ? Read on and find out.

As many will know, when the Coronavirus outbreak occurred, there was a veritable explosion of fever detection thermal camera development in the World. Any company capable of building its own thermal imaging fever detection systems started development of such and released them to market at the earliest opportunity. this created some interesting designs ! 

There are two main ways to make a thermal imaging camera

1. Start from scratch and build the complete camera system around a microbolometer FPA
2. Buy a thermal imaging core from another manufacturer and integrate it into a housing or system

The first option is man hour intensive, needs specialist knowledge and can be expensive. The second option provides a fast development path as most pf the hard work is already done and the proven core design provides a high chance of a successful outcome. With option 2, a manufacturer does not actually need to know a great deal about the hardware of a thermal imaging camera as the core will provide the required data and the manufacturer just has to provide appropriate processing software and maybe some basic system support electronics. It is no surprise that in a time of great need, many companies chose option 2 and bought-in proven thermal imaging cores, or adapted cameras that they already manufactured. This provided the desired fast response to market and Government demand.

The camera I am going to discuss here is the Medicore IRIS-A that was made in 2020. It is a product of Korea and has been in production for a while as a medical imaging camera. The camera was developed to enable physicians to image the human body in terms of thermal distribution etc and it was a medical tool. That version of the camera is called the IRIS-XP. With the onset of the Coronavirus pandemic, Medicore produced a package that provided users with simple multi-person targeting fever detection. I will not go into whether multi-person fever detection is a good approach here, but let us just say, it is not optimal. The fever detection system comprised an IRIS-A camera that was equipped with both thermal and visible light cameras plus a laptop that processed the images to detect the temperatures of people passing within the field of view. The System is called the IRIS-QT and is basically a development of the IRIS-XP camera.

The camera caught my eye due to its size and I wondered what was inside it. A bit of searching revealed the IRIS camera user and service manuals ! I was very interested to see a service manual, more so when I saw that the control PCB schematics are provided ! This is very unusual to see. After some negotiation with the seller, the camera was mine.

So what does the service manual reveal about this IRIS-A camera ?

1. The Medicore is a camera system built from building blocks rather than a "ground-up" design.
2. The IRIS_a camera contains a USB i3 TE-EQ1 camera core, a USB visible light camera and a simple controller board that provides motorized focussing of the thermal camera lens.

More about this camera later  :)

Fraser

Fraser:
So how did I find out what resides within the plain casing of the IRIS-A camera ?

Well helpfully the service manual provides detailed information on installing and checking the software to ensure that any perceived problem is not just a software driver issue. I noted from the PC screen shots that the driver for the thermal camera came from "i3".
On this forum we have many posts about the i3 Thermal Expert thermal cameras and the use of such a camera core in the IRIS series made sense as i3 is also Korean and experienced in thermal camera and core production. The next question was which camera or core was being used inside the casing. Was it an adapted mobile phone camera dongle, a standard i3 building block core, or something bespoke ? Having looked at the specifications of the IRIS and seen that thermal core uses 17um pixels, I browsed the selection of cameras and cores that i3 offer via their web site. It soon became obvious that the i3 TE-EQ1 was the most likely choice for Medicore to use. The TE-EQ1 is a building block core, much like the FLIR TAU series. There are various interface options provided by different "feature boards" that mount on the rear of the core.

The Medicore IRIS camera is an unusual design in that it is not truly an "integrated" solution. It is two separate USB cameras with a USB/Serial driven control board that drives the lens focus stepper motor using an ATMEGA chip. Note that each USB feed is separate and there is no integrated USB Hub ! How odd is that ! The umbilical cable from the camera uses two round connectors at the camera and breaks out into two USB plugs and a serial 9 pin D type. A USB to RS232 adapter and the two camera USB connectors plug into an external USB Hub.

Looking at the service manual it is clear that one USB cable goes directly to the i3 camera core, as expected, whilst another goes to a visible light camera breakout PCB. The RS232 serial cable connects to the controller board that hosts an ATMEGA8535, A3966SLB stepper motor driver and a MAX232 RS232 level changer. The ATMEGA8535 appears to be nothing more than an "Arduino solution" to controlling the thermal cameras focus motor. The controller communicates with the PC via RS232 so a USB to RS232 adapter is needed at the PC end of the system.

So lets just recap .....

The thermal camera core is a USB driven version that connects to the host PC via an external USB hub
The visible light camera is a USB driven version that connects to the host PC via an external USB hub
The Focus motor controller is RS232 driven and requires an external USB to RS232 adapter before connecting to an external USB hub

Anyone else thinking this is a rushed solution to a problem that presented itself to the design team. Basically take a nice posh casing and bolt the required components into it from various sources and run the required communication cables out the rear without any attempt at integration ! Why did they not place the USB to RS232 converter on the controller PCB and a USB hub, COTS or bespoke  inside the casing ? This design screams "screwdriver manufacturer" where a "designer" only has to specify the component parts that must be linked together and placed in a box. COTS products are used as much as possible.

I took a look at the focus motor controller PCB layout that appears in the service manual. This may be a bespoke board but I suspect that it is, in truth, little more than a Arduino running a simple RS232 communications and Stepper motor script. I do not know the commands used to control the focus motor and Medicore have not responded to my email on the matter yet. I will not be receiving the Medicore software with the camera so cannot monitor the focus commands sent to the camera. With luck, the ATMEGA chip will not be read protected in any way. If it is read protected, I doubt I will discover the commands used to set focus and will have to write my own script for that functionality. It is basically just an Arduino after all.

So there we have it. A nice looking "Box Camera" that is, in truth, just a collection of building blocks plus an "Arduino" ! This is great news for me though as it is so adaptable ! No need for reverse engineering of camera data paths, camera communications protocols or other nasties that a fully integrated bespoke camera solution presents. I can download all the software for the i3 TE-EQ1 from the i3 Thermal Expert site and the visible light camera is most likely nothing more than a generic USB webcam. Only the thermal camera lens control presents any form of challenge to the cameras repurposing for other uses.

I await the arrival of the camera and I am away from base so it will be a while before I can upload internal pictures of the IRIS-A camera. In the mean time, I attach information on the i3 thermal core that I believe resides inside this camera. It will be interesting to see how the motorized focus system is implemented. I do not expect anything particularly complex, but it does include end stop switches.

i3 website for the suspected core:

http://www.i3-thermalexpert.com/product/t-e-eq1-copy/

Fraser

Fraser:
The Medicore IRIS-QT fever screening system:

https://www.medi-core.com/en/thermography/iris-qt.html?ckattempt=1

Fraser

Fraser:
I just noticed....in the provided pictures of the camera, a picture of the underside reveals a label clearly showing "EQ1" and a number that I would guess is the cores serial number. I totally missed that clear pointer to the Thermal Expert EQ1 imaging core  :-DD

Fraser

Logan:
Oh you bought it!
I saw it on ebay and after tons of search for spec sheet to no avail, I hold back.
Glad you get such a good core for cheap.
I was afraid it's something 47x47, or proprietary signal... So i wasn't brave enough to put a bet on it.

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