New Group Gets Campaign

Group Gets recently introduced  the inexpensive Lepton FS, which is really a Lepton 3.5 that failed some tests.  It still works as a thermal imaging camera but its accuracy as a radiometric camera isn't guaranteed.  I played with one and my unit was pretty accurate at room temperature (perhaps its internal compensating temperature sensor wasn't working).  The modules identify as a Lepton 3.5 so work with the tCam-Mini FW just fine.

Group Gets is having a campaign pairing a Lepton FS with a tCam-Mini for $129. My commission and their profit on these units is pretty much zero but the campaign is a good way to get an inexpensive thermal imaging camera. 

https://groupgets.com/campaigns/978-tcam-mini-with-lepton-fs

New Firmware

Over the summer and into the fall I've been working on and testing new firmware for tCam-Mini and have posted it to the github and my website.  This version 2.0 firmware has support for the new hardware Slave IF necessary for tCam-Mini to be the sensor for tCam and several other good new  features.

• Improved performance over Wifi - The camera can stream up to the full 8.7 FPS the Lepton is capable of putting out.
• Support for Lepton 3.0 - The non-radiometric 160x120 pixel camera module is now recognized by the FW and handled properly.
• Support for over-the-air firmware updates - After loading this new version via the serial interface, future updates can be sent from the Desktop application running on any platform.

One note is that the new firmware will only run on tCam-Mini's with revision 3 ESP32 chips and at least 8 MB of Flash memory (e.g. the PCB version).  The increased memory is required to hold the multiple OTA firmware slots used by the ESP32.  Cameras based on the TTGO development board can't be upgraded beyond FW 1.3 but will remain compatible with future versions of all my supporting software.

In addition to the firmware source now on github, there are precompiled binary files, instructions and the necessary Espressif Windows utility in github and on my website.

https://danjuliodesigns.com/products/tcam_mini.html

I will document the new hardware Slave IF soon.  In addition to use with the tCam firmware running on the gCore hardware (also soon to be documented), I think it would be useful for other controllers like the Raspberry Pi which have traditionally struggled to keep up with the VoSPI interface. 

Updated Desktop Application

In addition, I've release version 2.0.0 of the Desktop application.  The primary feature is support for OTA FW updates but it also has several other changes.

• Support for Lepton 3.0 - since the Lepton 3.0 doesn't support radiometric output the application suppresses all temperature displays and controls.
• Added the ability to resize the main window.
• Added three new color palettes - Banded, Black Hot and Sepia
• Modified the FPS display to use timestamp information from the camera or video file and changed the averaging algorithm for a more accurate display over time.
• Support the new Apple Arm Macs with a universal build - still have a separate x86 build for older versions of OS X.
• Some internal restructuring and minor bug fixes.

Built for 64-bit x86 Linux, 64-bit x86 Windows, 64-bit x86/Arm Mac OS X, and 32-bit Arm Linux (Raspberry Pi).  Available in the github repository or my website.