Trying to find more info on a really old Fluke thermal imager - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Ben321
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 20, 2021, 06:29:54 am
content: I had a really old Davis Instruments catalog (like 1 to 2 inches thick) from well over decade ago, and got rid of it a few years ago. In that catalog I remember there was a Fluke (at least I think that was the brand) thermal imager that had a builtin 3.5 inch floppy drive (not SD card or Compact Flash card slot). Yeah, it was that old. And I remember it had like a flip up LCD screen for viewing live, and I think the video signal got to the screen not through a ribbon cable in the hinges of the screen, but rather through an external cable (one of those spiral telephone cable type cables, like what would normally connect a handset to the telephone base) that connected from the base of the thermal imager unit to the screen. I can't find that ANYWHERE on the internet. I even used Google's search tools to limit the time period of the search results to the early 2000s (when I think I first had this catalog). I also used the Internet Archive Wayback Machine to search an old version of the Davis Instruments online catalog. The closest I found was these pages which have Fluke thermal imagers, but not the one I'm remembering.https://web.archive.org/web/20060519043240/http://www.davis.com/showl5.asp?L5ID=19&L4ID=167https://web.archive.org/web/20060509124700/https://davis.com/ministore.asp?MSID=1&MSL4ID=312I remember it looking VERY similar to this Hioki brand camerahttps://web.archive.org/web/20060519043240/http://www.davis.com/showpage.asp?L3ID=2174(complete with its flipup screen) but this one has no mention of a floppy disk for saving images (and I distinctly remember the thermal imager I'm thinking of having a floppy drive), and also this thermal imager doesn't have have the spiral telephone style cable connecting its screen to it base (as can be seen from this picture of the imager).http://www.hongmeirui.com/images/up_images/20148923338.jpgAlso this Hioki thermal imager only has 64 pixels (8x8 pixel focal plane array), while the similar looking Fluke thermal imager, had a 320x240 pixel focal plane array.I'm hoping that with the descriptions I've given, somebody here with familiarity of old thermal imaging equipment will be able to (based on my textual description of it) chime in and give me a model number for it, so I can do further research on it.

author: Fraser
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 20, 2021, 12:12:55 pm
content: Something like this ?FLUKE did not make their own thermal cameras and rebadged other OEM products.http://spi-wholesale.com/shop/mikron-th-5104-3-5-micron-midwave-thermo-tracer-infrared-camera/This is the Mikron TH5104 that is actually made by NEC AVIO.The unit does not have the floppy disk drive so may be a later version. Having said that I have not seen an ‘on camera’ floppy disk drive since the AGEMA THV470.Fraser

author: Fraser
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 20, 2021, 12:54:48 pm
content: The AVIO TVS-100 used a similar case format but lacks the coiled monitor cable you mentioned and I do not think it contained a floppy disk drive.Fraser

author: Fraser
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 20, 2021, 12:57:12 pm
content: Inside the Mikron TH5104...https://youtu.be/5kUiiddvtw0Fraser

author: Ben321
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 21, 2021, 11:22:21 am
content: Quote from: Fraser on March 20, 2021, 12:12:55 pmWOW! How did you find such an obscure piece of equipment? I'm seriously impressed! Thanks for finding it (or at least one that's probably from the same company as the one I was thinking of).Also, while this one might be it but I could have sworn I remember reading in the old Davis Instruments catalog that I originally found it in that it used a floppy drive. The one in your picture Appears to use a compact flash card, and comes with a PCMCIA card which is a compact flash card reader (not sure if the PCMCIA card is used in the camera as its interface to the compact flash card, or only on the computer end to read the compact flash card). Either this isn't quite the same model as the one I'm remembering (possibly the one I'm remembering is a different model within the same series of cameras, kinda like FLIR's T620 and T640 which only differ by a few features but are otherwise the same) or else I'm simply remembering it incorrectly, and it never had a floppy drive.I'm also a bit concerned that this says the camera is MWIR. To the best of my recollection, it was a LWIR (not MWIR) camera, but this was many years ago, and I don't know if at the time I even knew the difference. I may have only known that it was a thermal imager camera. Do you know if there ever was a Mikron LWIR thermal imager that existed around the same time as this Mikron MWIR camera?I have a couple more questions. Do you know if there ever was a Fluke rebranded version of this camera, or am I possibly remembering that wrong too? Can you find any other info about Mickon's thermal imagers product line from in the same time period that the Mikron TH 5104 was being sold? Is the Mikron TH 5104 a 320x240 camera? The video on the page you linked to where somebody is selling it, shows an image that appears to have a much lower actual resolution than 320x240 (and then interpolated to a higher resolution, even higher than 320x240, for the video). However, I strongly remember reading in the Davis Instruments catalog that it was a 320x240 thermal imager.By the way, when I was talking about my old Davis Instruments catalogTHIS is the Davis Instruments that I'm talking abouthttp://www.davis.com/NOT this onehttps://www.davisinstruments.com/I'm surprised they are both allowed to have the same company name, due to trademark law.

author: Fraser
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 21, 2021, 12:43:31 pm
content: Sorry I know nothing more about the camera. I recognised the camera from your descriptionI am a repository of useless informationThere is the possibility that a PCMCIA floppy disk drive option was available to plug into the PCMCIA port and mount on the cameras underside, just as was available for laptops (I have a few such PCMCIA FDD’s). The camera uses a PCMCIA port and likely was supplied originally with an ATA Flash PCMCIA card. Such cards are a pain to use with modern computers and thankfully a Compact Flash card in a simple ‘dumb’ passive CF to PCMCIA adapter presents to the camera as an ATA PCMCIA flash card. You have to use low capacity CF cards of 500MB (yes MB, not GB) or less though as the firmware will not recognise the larger memory capacities and reject the CF card. I use 256MB CF cards in PCMCIA adapters in my cameras.Frase

author: Ben321
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 22, 2021, 01:04:16 am
content: Quote from: Fraser on March 20, 2021, 12:57:12 pmCOOL! It's actually a single pixel camera, with X-Y scanning mirrors?