Starling 2 Thermal Camera Suggestions

wifa799

Hi devs,
I recently received the Starling 2 drone for our lab and went trough the bootcamp.
For our use case we will need to add a thermal camera, to be able to stream/save the thermal video.

Based on the documentation, I found that the FLIR Lepton as well as the FLIR Boson seem to be the most straight forward possibilities.
Nevertheless, I'm not sure about the details on how to add the cameras to the drone.

FLIR Lepton:
Are there any updates about the FLIR Lepton camera integration?
I'm aware that the Starling already comes with an added Lepton connector, but I haven't read anything about it being already running and integrated with the software.

In case a I/O Module is required, can you suggest which of the available boards to chose from?
Mini USB: https://groupgets.com/products/purethermal-mini-usb
JST: https://groupgets.com/products/purethermal-mini-pro-jst-sr
Other: https://groupgets.com/products/purethermal-breakout-board

According to the online guide (https://docs.modalai.com/voxl-uvc-flir/) for VOXL 1 (not sure if this is also valid for VOXL2?), at least an additional USB expansion board will be required.
Is this also true for using the Lepton with the MINI USB I/O board or could I actually connect it via the VOXL2 flightcomputer's USB C interface?
In case this is not an option, do the other I/O board require additional hardware as well or is there a more straight forward option for the VOXL2?

FLIR Boson
Regarding the FLIR BOSON option I have found this documentation:
https://docs.modalai.com/m0153/
Can we already purchase this adapter to enable a straight forward connection?

Alternatively, I found the following FLIR Boson I/O board online: https://www.flircameras.com/rhp-bos-usbc-if.htm
Would it be an option to connect the board with the Starling flightcomputer's USB-C?

Thank you very much for your help!

modaltb

Hi @wifa799 ,

For FLIR Lepton.
This one would work off the M0173 J6 connector:
https://groupgets.com/products/purethermal-breakout-board

I need to update the M0173 data sheet... but a here's pinout for that connector for now for reference, for Lepton 3.5 BTW:

For FLIR Boson.

MIPI Boson:
The M0153-1 is intended for a MIPI based Boson. Currently, the only way to get BOSON into MIPI mode (as shown on the link you provided), is to use a USB backpack (M0153-2) first to put the sensor into MIPI mode (along with other settings). Also, when buying a Boson with MIPI support, it needs to be a Boson+. You will receive it and need to use M0153-2 over USB to connect to it to a Windows machine and then setup for MIPI which can then be used with VOXL using MIPI camera ports, and use VOXL Camera Server

USBC Boson:
The VOXL2 hardware needs to have M0154 on the silkscreen (not M0054) for the USBC port to work as a host. I just validated a USBC backback on a Boson to the USBC port on VOXL2.

Using the USB2.0 port (e.g. where the WiFi dongle is plugged in) would work for the USB2.0 backback. VOXL UVC server would be used here for the USB cameras.

Please keep hitting me with questions here if not clear!

wifa799

@modaltb Thanks a lot for your help!

I have now tried to run the FLIR Lepton connected to this board (https://media.digikey.com/pdf/Data Sheets/GroupGets PDFs/PURETHERMAL-M_3-14-19.pdf) to limit the amount of additional hardware changes. For this I connected a USB splitter to the USB port, where the WiFi dongle is. Then I added the Flir Lepton via USB as well as the WiFi dongle (see photo below).

By typing in "lsusb" I can see the camera as a connected webcam device.
Then I configure the voxl-uvc-server with "voxl-uvc-server -r 160x120 -f 9" and the voxl-streamer with "voxl-streamer -c uvc-flir-lepton".

When I switch to the VOXL web portal, I can actually see that an additional "UVC" camera stream is available.
However, it doesn't show the video stream (see attached screenshot) and shows a resolution of "0x0" and a format type of "IMAGE_FORMATt_YUV422_UYVY".

I was also unable to start the stream using VLC as described in the manual (https://docs.modalai.com/voxl-uvc-flir/).
But I was able to see the video as an ASCII stream, so it seems like some data is actually being streamed.
Is it possible that there is a problem with the video format being used?

I have tested the camera and breakout board on my laptop and it works fine.

I have also tried accessing the video via QGroundcontrol but have had no luck.
Do you know of any way to actually switch between the different video streams in QGroundcontrol?
At the moment I can only open the high-resolution front camera stream.

Thanks again for your help!