[TG] [TG11] M232 Grainy Picture

[Tom - Raymarine - Moderator]

Hello Robinsonh2o,

That looks and sounds like your camera isn't correctly performing its Non-Uniformity Correction / Flat Field Correction (NUC / FFC, the names are used interchangeably: NUC describes the objective, FFC how this is performed.) All of our marine thermal cameras do this periodically in order to zero out slight differences in the response of the individual pixels of the microbolometer detector. You'll see this as a slight pause (1-2s) in the image every few minutes as the camera flips a black-body shutter in front of the detector inside the camera and recalibrates the output of all of the pixels. If the NUC doesn't happen then the quality of the image will gradually degrade over time, until the camera is power-cycled.

There was a problem in early M232 software where the NUC could be set to occur manually rather than automatically (manual NUCs are used by some professional users, all normal users want Auto.) The solution is to update the M232's software and then perform a factory reset on it, which sets the NUC setting back to Auto.

The M232 software upgrade is a dealer/service-centre level process, so I would start by contacting the dealer who supplied the camera or your nearest Raymarine service centre about getting this updated. The latest software for M232 today is v2.07 (the webpage says 2.05, it looks like that's a little outdated. v2.07 is what you need.)

Regards,
Tom