Prosilica

../../../_images/prosilica.jpg

Introduction

AVT offers a large choice of FireWire and GigE cameras for machine vision, computer vision and other industrial or medical applications. Cameras by AVT and Prosilica include sensitive machine vision sensors (CCD and CMOS, VGA to 16 Megapixels) and fit a wide range of applications.

The Lima module as been tested with color and B/W GigE camera.

Installation & Module configuration

Follow the generic instructions in Build and Install. If using CMake directly, add the following flag:

-DLIMACAMERA_PROSILICA=true

For the Tango server installation, refers to PyTango Device Server.

Initialisation and Capabilities

Implementing a new plugin for new detector is driven by the LIMA framework but the developer has some freedoms to choose which standard and specific features will be made available. This section is supposed to give you good knowledge regarding camera features within the LIMA framework.

Camera initialisation

The camera will be initialized by creating a :cpp:Prosilica::Camera object. The contructor sets the camera with default parameters, only the ip address or hostname of the camera is mandatory.

Std capabilities

This plugin has been implemented in respect of the mandatory capabilites but with some limitations which are due to the camera and SDK features. Only restriction on capabilites are documented here.

  • HwDetInfo

    getCurrImageType/getDefImageType(): it can change if the video mode change (see HwVideo capability).

    setCurrImageType(): It only supports Bpp8 and Bpp16.

  • HwSync

    get/setTrigMode(): the only supported mode are IntTrig, IntTrigMult and ExtTrigMult.

Optional capabilities

In addition to the standard capabilities, we make the choice to implement some optional capabilities which are supported by the SDK. Video and Binning are available.

  • HwVideo

    The prosilica cameras are pure video devices, so only video format for image are supported:

    Color cameras ONLY
    • BAYER_RG8

    • BAYER_RG16

    • RGB24

    • BGR24

    Color and Monochrome cameras
    • Y8

    Use get/setMode() methods of the cpp::class::Video object (i.e. CtControl::video()) to read or set the format.

  • HwBin

    There is no restriction for the binning up to the maximum size.

Configuration

  • First you have to setup ip address of the Prosilica Camera with CLIpConfig located in camera/prosilica/sdk/CLIpConfig

  • list of all cameras available : CLIpConfig -l (If you do not see any camera, that’s bad news!)

  • finally set ip add : CLIpConfig -u UNIQUE_NUMBER -s -i 169.254.X.X -n 255.255.255.0 -m FIXED (It’s an example!)

  • Then in the Prosilica Tango device set the property cam_ip_address to the address previously set.

That’s all….

How to use

This is a python code example for a simple test:

from Lima import Prosilica
from lima import Core

cam = Prosilica.Camera("192.169.1.1")

hwint = Prosilica.Interface(cam)
ct = Core.CtControl(hwint)

acq = ct.acquisition()

# set video  and test video

video=ct.video()
video.setMode(Core.RGB24)
video.startLive()
video.stopLive()
video_img = video.getLastImage()

# set and test acquisition

# setting new file parameters and autosaving mode
saving=ct.saving()

pars=saving.getParameters()
pars.directory='/buffer/lcb18012/opisg/test_lima'
pars.prefix='test1_'
pars.suffix='.edf'
pars.fileFormat=Core.CtSaving.TIFF
pars.savingMode=Core.CtSaving.AutoFrame
saving.setParameters(pars)

acq.setAcqExpoTime(0.1)
acq.setNbImages(10)
ct.prepareAcq()
ct.startAcq()

# wait for last image (#9) ready
lastimg = ct.getStatus().ImageCounters.LastImageReady
while lastimg !=9:
  time.sleep(0.01)
  lastimg = ct.getStatus().ImageCounters.LastImageReady

# read the first image
im0 = ct.ReadImage(0)