I bought a GuideIR E2+ right when it was released in November 2024, next to seeming to be a nice IR camera one of the main features I was interested in was the WiFi streaming feature it offered. Being able to connect it to my home WiFi and wirelessly streaming to my PC so I can show it during my livestreams seemed awesome! But alas, it never worked, until now!
Bought it right when it was released
So I bought the GuideIR (Guide IR?) E2+ right when it was released in November of 2024, I got it from Eleshop and those guys have been great with all my orders and support!. I realized it was just released and that it would likely still contain some bugs, that’s ok and I was prepared for that, one of the big features the unit touts is having OTA upgrade support. So I figured, a few firmware updates later, they’ll likely fix any issues.
TL;DR
My camera was stuck on firmware version v1.0.16.20241105, OTA needed to be manually unlocked by GuideIR by mailing with them and then upgraded to v1.0.26 that made the feature (most often) work!
There were issues…. No WiFi streaming
The exact feature I bought the camera for, didn’t work for me, the WiFi connected streaming. I spent many hours trying to get it to work but whatever I did, I could not get the PC Thermotools application to connect to the camera over my network to the WiFi connected E2+.
I didn’t understand why, I was able to ping the E2+ on my network just fine, so it had a connection for sure. But whatever I did, no joy.
It can work though!
Oddly, using AP mode where the Thermal camera creates it’s own wireless network, I was able to connect it to the Android app and also to my PC using a little WiFi dongle with the Thermography application. I figured I must be doing something wrong but whatever I tried, it would not work. π
OTA updates to the rescue!
Well…. yes, but no. Over the year (It’s now November 2025) I must have tried the OTA feature a hundred times but it just kept saying “The latest version is not available” and that was it, no updates, ever.
My GuideIR E2+ seemed to be stuck on firmware version: V1.0.16.20241105
So I used the camera for my design purposes on my own and it worked well for that, it’s a fine camera and works well for PCB work with an optional macro lens but using it on a livestream, nope. π
Fed up and frustrated I reached out to GuideIR or Guide Sensmart
I first tried the form on their website, no response.
Then I reached out using an e-mail address I found (ε½ι δΈε‘ <enquiry@guideir.com>), I actually got a response that they acknowledged issues but… no follow up or only useless comments like “check your WiFi”, etc.. π
So I got frustrated and started commenting on their YouTube channel and also of someone who had an E2 and showed it working in one of his videos! (He replied which was helpful, acknowledging that much newer firmware version did indeed exist!)
I also reached out to their store on Alibaba and I finally got into contact with someone who replied to me on their messager and then we switched to e-mail, they were using (ζζΈ ζ₯ <liqc@guideir.com>).
Progress!
After mailing with them they asked me for the serial number of my camera and then they mailed back that they “pushed OTA to my unit” for me. Say what?
So I booted up the camera, had it connect to my WiFi, tried OTA upgrade and what do you know, suddenly v1.0.26 is available for upgrade! I hit upgrade and it downloaded and upgraded the camera without a problem.
So… what did it improve?
First the camera seems to boot even faster (it wasn’t slow before). But I wanted to know if the WiFi streaming would work now, and in short, yes, it did, but read on!
Frustration
UURGHH, that means the countless hours I spent on this and the year I’ve been waiting for this to work was mostly in vain? Having contacted them before and only getting “It must be your WiFi” before, very frustrating. But let’s move beyond that!
So now WiFi streaming works and it’s awesome!
Well, works is maybe a slight overstatement. It still doesn’t always connect, for some reason the pings also seem very erratic when this happens:
In that screenshot you can see the camera working fine, pinging me back as it should. The erratic behaviour under that is when it fails to connect but the PC Thermography tool is open and searching or trying to connect. Sometimes it’s impossible to connect to it and I have to disable and re-enable WiFi again and that makes it work.
So I’m not yet 100% sure how to get it to always connect, currently it connects about 15% of the time but once it is connected, I can easily video stream for 10 minutes so that seems very stable (the ping is then also a consistent 1ms to 2ms, nothing missed). For some reason exiting the WiFi screen to the normal IR feed and then going back to it seems to make it work sometimes? I dunno.
So working yes but not a great experience yet. Also downloading the pictures in WiFi mode only works 10% of the time and transferring recorded videos doesn’t work ever, the files just don’t show. But fine whatever, I can just do that over USB.
New features
The camera now also seems to support an RTSP option that’s available in the WiFi menu option! I asked GuideIR for what the URL was but Eleshop already replied (Great tech shop here in NL, highly recommended, good service with great prices!).
The RSTP URL is: rtsp://10.10.128.113:8554/video where the “10.10.128.113” is the IP of the camera on your network of course.
(Another weird feature missing on the camera, no way to get the IP address the device has on the device itself)
Tested it with VLC and I again have to connect 2 or 3 times but then it connects and works well. Sadly it’s a bit useless though, the feed has no overlay at all so while you can see the thermal image, since it doesn’t display any information, I’m not sure what good that does.
Also it seems like “super resolution” doesn’t do anything in the RTSP stream. The image changes a little bit but the video feed is 256×320 either way.
Still not great for video work. π
Although it works fine as a real-time tool, especially now that the WiFi streaming is working, as a true tool there is still odd things that are just missing.
Exported video for instance, just like the RTSP feed is without an overlay. I’m not sure who that is useful for, it’s certainly not me. I might sometimes want to record some thermal video and include it into a video but without the overlay, that isn’t much use now is it?
Even if the camera itself isn’t able to do this because of limited processing power, then why can’t the Thermotools PC application do it? Very odd and making it quite useless, you **cannot** export video with an overlay in any way at all. So… what use is it? I don’t want to use that Thermotools application every time I want to look at a video as the only option.
Options to get video with overlay
There are 2 ways if you really need it!
- Using USB in projector mode where it mirrors the internal screen, which does show the overlay. It’s quite low resolution, but it’s something at least.
- Using Thermotools application (in USB, WiFi or AP mode) and capture the Thermotools application window with OBS and then cropping the video so you only see the video image. This actually gives you pretty high quality video since the thermotools application overlays text in high resolution.
- This way you can also take recorded footage, get the overlay to display, record it with OBS, crop it and you have a video with the overlay information on there.
But come on, if “record it with another device” is the only option, that’s just stupid and bad in my opinion. So such things just don’t make sense to me and it makes the camera a lot less useful then it could be.
Timeline 1 (recorded on camera, analyzed with PC application, played back while window recording in OBS, edited in Davinci Resolve to cut it down. It works but man, so many steps to go through which shouldn’t be needed.)
Final verdict
So is the GuideIR E2+ a good camera? I feel it is with now most features working, it certainly has some unique features vs others. But at the same time it certainly has it’s limitations.
The hardware is fine (it’s not the most sensitive but good enough really) and the idea with the WiFi connectivity is great, the execution still leaves a lot to be desired though.
So depending on what you need it for, make your own choice.
Real-time analysis (even through WiFi using the PC app), once it connects, great! Saving photos, great!
Recording or Streaming real-time video into VLC or OBS over WiFi or saving MP4’s… not so much. Recording videos to later use in other software, also not great, without an overlay it’s basically useless. (The workarounds are workable but really frustrating)
For me, I can now use the camera over WiFi with the Thermotools application, capture it with OBS and use it untethered with a cable during my livestreams and I can make it work for recorded video too. That’s a great step forward vs before.
It’s just so close to being a great tool and with these issues I can only call it mediocre for now. If there are any meaningful improvements in the future, I will certainly report back!
Afterword
I will try and work with GuideIR to improve these things. Most if not all of this is just software. I just can’t accept this is the best it can do because of those limitations.
I also have a GuideIR E4 coming in because of some better features it has (again paid for with my own money), let’s see if that has maybe already improved a few of these things and I can finally use it during my livestreams and videos!
And I wanted to finish with another shout out to Eleshop, I’ve been buying from them for years and they’ve always been very helpful, even with complicated questions or things I’d like them to test on a piece of hardware before purchasing. If you are looking for Electronics tools in the EU, consider purchasing it from them!