Products > Thermal Imaging
Uni-t UTi260B
Honusnap:
Hello,
Did some of you upgraded their firmware on the 260B... ? Or have a link to something about firmware/flash tool fort this device or A-BF 680/C200SE/C200/C200 Pro/Topdon TC005 ?
JDW:
I recently purchased a UTi260B from Banggood, which marked my first order ever from Banggood. Thankfully it ships in a nice padded box because that box was shipped in a thin plastic bag with zero padding, and it arrived with small holes and rips, and the box corners were slightly smashed.
I ordered the official Macro lens for it too, also from Banggood. Why they foolishly shipped the camera and the lens separately is anyone's guess, but they didn't charge me extra for shipping two separate packages. The UT-Z002 macro lens ships in a plastic blister pack, and silly Banggood only puts that inside the same, unpadded plastic bag when shipping. It arrived in one piece thankfully, and works great to allow my 260B to get very close to a PCB.
Sadly, the official UT-Z002 macro lens covers the digital camera and only allows the thermal camera to view the device under test. I am also finding the temperature readings to be hotter when using the Macro lens, as compared to when not using it. And when I attach my 121GW's Type-K thermal probe to a hotspot, I see that the temperatures on the 260B without the macro lens attached are the most accurate. In other words, my 121GW with Type-K thermocouple's temperature measurements largely match the 260B WITHOUT the Macro lens attached. Yes, Emissivity settings matter, but that is not at the heart of the problem. The Macro lens just makes the readings about 10°C hotter, for reasons I don't understand. Other than that, the benefits of the Macro lens are great because you can finally get up close and see hotspots on even SMD components.
The cost of the official UT-Z002 Macro lens is much cheaper than other compatible Macro lenses that merely tape onto the 260B, such as those sold by NorthridgeFix here. Prior to purchasing the official lens, I tried to ask NorthridgeFix what the functional differences are between theirs and the official one, but after waiting a week, they never gave me a reply, which is quite odd. My post to their form is still awaiting approval too, which is also odd.
The good news is my 260B is working fine so far. Seems very well made and is built to be rugged. It firmware ver. 2.0.20 and the unit included a 32GB uSD card. While searching for firmware updates in vain today, I came across this thread and is why I decided to post this. It seems that if indeed there is newer firmware, it's not online, nor is it clear how one would update it.
I must say the official PC software for the 260B stinks. It doesn't do much at all, and while I was able to get it to work by downloading the latest Parallels trial to run Windows on ARM on my M1 Max MacBook Pro, the official software won't run at all under WINE. Quite sad because WINE is free.
When running the official software, it's nice that there's a video feed to the computer when you link the included USB-C cable between the 260B and the computer, but the only way I see to save the video is to make a screen recording. And that's it. The software doesn't allow you to do any of the important things it should, like saving a clean thermal image with no data overlay, changing the color palettes on the fly, etc. Why? Seriously... Why skip that? Ack!
I did find this Github page with a Python script to extract clean images. I'm not well versed in Python usage though, so I'm not sure the best way to go about it. For those of you who have tried that Python script or who otherwise are Python experts, what's the step by step approach to doing it on a Mac? Or could it be done online by moving the saved images to the computer and then uploading them?
Thanks.
TobyG:
Well. Here we are.
Bought a 690B (seems to be the banggood version of the 260b, internals and functionality are identical) in 2021, only used it maybe a dozen times, mostly to find shorts on PCBs that were not immediately obvious, of course with an extra Macro lens attached to it.
Either way, went to use it yesterday aaaaand it doesn't boot.
Gets stuck at 100% and I keep hearing what sounds like a lens focussing, pretty sure that's coming from the thermal camera, not from the normal one.
I can still turn it off as usual, it charges just fine and I can turn the LED lights on and off, but that's it.
Already checked the hardware, at least the supply voltages are all there, with the exception of that little coin cell, that is pretty much dead, but just putting a 3V supply there didn't change anything, either.
Emailed Banggood and Uni-T in hopes they would offer a (paid) repair, maybe, but no luck.
So yeah, that's a bit of a bummer.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, I'm not a software guy, so,
unless someone has a magic solution that even I could try:
Free to a good home if someone in Europe wants to give it a shot.
It's appreciated if shipping gets paid, but if you're a broke student or something, don't worry.
Fraser:
TobyG,
I have sent you an offer to look at repairing your camera for no cost to you except postage if I repair it. :)
Fraser
Fraser:
The patient arrived today from TobyG.
I installed some Dupont test pins in the Serial engineering port location and connected a Prolific PL2303 USB-UART bridge. The boot log has revealed where the camera is failing its boot sequence. It is too early to say whether the camera may be resurrected.
Fraser
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