HALCON 9.0 Image Acquisition Interface for Mikrotron INSPECTA-5 Boards

This page provides the documentation of the HALCON INSPECTA5 image acquisition interface for the Mikrotron frame grabber boards INSPECTA-5. Registered customers can download the latest revision of this interface from the MVTec WWW server.

Revision: 4.0

System Requirements

• Intel compatible PC with Windows 2000/XP.
• Successfully installed Mikrotron driver mpfgi5xp.sys (version 0.1.6.0 or higher).
• Mikrotron DLL mvfgi5.dll (version 0.1.6.0 or higher)
  This DLL must be within your search path %PATH%. If you do not have this DLL, please contact Mikrotron or the vendor from which you bought the frame grabber board.
• Camera Link DLL clsermi5.dll (version 1.1.0.0 or higher) for serial communication over the frame grabber board.
• HALCON image acquisition interface hAcqInspecta5.dll or hAcqInspecta5xl.dll, respectively.
  If you have properly installed the interface, both DLLs should reside in bin\%HALCONARCH% within the HALCON base directory %HALCONROOT% you have chosen during the installation of HALCON.

Features

• Support for Camera Link cameras with base, medium or full Camera Link interface.
• Support for a wide range of Camera Link cameras with 8/10/12 bpp (monochrome) or 24/30/36 bpp (RGB).
• Support for line scan cameras.
• Transfer rates up to 660 MB/s from camera to frame grabber onboard memory.
• Synchronous and asynchronous grabbing.
• External trigger.
• Subsampling or cropping of image parts (via camera configuration files).

Limitations

• Only one frame grabber per computer.
• Only one camera per frame grabber board.
• No LUTs.
• grab_data and grab_data_async not supported.

Description

Parameters for open_framegrabber():

	Name		'INSPECTA5'		The name of the HALCON image acquisition interface.
	HorizontalResolution		1		Ignored (the desired image resolution is set via the camera configuration file specified in the CameraType parameter!). Default: 1.
	VerticalResolution		1		Ignored (the desired image resolution is set via the camera configuration file specified in the CameraType parameter!). Default: 1.
	ImageWidth		0		Ignored (the desired image part is set via the camera configuration file specified in the CameraType parameter!). Default: 0.
	ImageHeight		0		Ignored (the desired image part is set via the camera configuration file specified in the CameraType parameter!). Default: 0.
	StartRow		0		Ignored (the desired image part is set via the camera configuration file specified in the CameraType parameter!). Default: 0.
	StartColumn		0		Ignored (the desired image part is set via the camera configuration file specified in the CameraType parameter!). Default: 0.
	Field		---		Ignored.
	BitsPerChannel		---		Ignored (the desired number of bits per image channel set via the camera configuration file specified in the CameraType parameter!). Default: -1.
	ColorSpace		---		Ignored.
	Generic		---		Ignored.
	ExternalTrigger		'true', 'false'		Activate/deactivate external triggering. Note that this setting overrides the corresponding setup in the camera configuration file. Default: 'false'.
	CameraType		'file;camera'		This parameter is used to specify the camera configuration file and the section within this file (e.g., 'c:\\Inspecta-5\\Halcon\\I5Halcon.cam;MC13xx 1280x1024 502fps 10x8 taps, 8bit/pixel' for the configuration file 'I5Halcon.cam' and the camera profile 'MC13xx 1280x1024 502fps 10x8 taps, 8bit/pixel'). To check a camera or to alter the camera configuration file, use the software delivered with the INSPECTA-5 board.
	Device		'0'		The number of the frame grabber board (passed as a string!). Default: '0'.
	Port		0		The number attached to the desired camera channel. Default: 0.
	LineIn		---		Ignored.

Parameters for set_framegrabber_param():

	'continuous_grabbing'		'enable', 'disable'		Activate or deactivate 'continuous grabbing'. Sets grabbing mode from single frame capture to continuous mode. If the continuous mode is enabled, the frame grabber board will grab all the time. In this mode you can achieve full frame rate. This mode is not allowed in combination with external triggering. Default: 'disable'.
	'external_trigger'		'true', 'false'		Activate/deactivate external triggering. Note that this setting overwrites the corresponding setup in the camera configuration file.
	'grab_timeout'		msec		Specify the desired timeout (milliseconds passed as an integer) for aborting a pending grab (the default value is specified in the camera configuration file).
	'photo'		0, 1, 2, ...		Shutter time. Note that the time base for the shutter time depends on settings in the camera configuration file, e.g., 1.085 usec.
	'start_async_after_grab_async'		'enable', 'disable'		By default, at the end of grab_image_async a new asynchronous grab command is automatically given to the frame grabber board. If the parameter 'start_async_after_grab_async' is set to 'disable' this new grab command is omitted. This might be useful especially for switching between several connected cameras. Default: 'enable'.
	'trigger_mode'		'edge', 'pulse_width'		Specify desired trigger mode: 'edge' means that the trigger edge initiates the image acquisition (with a fixed image height). If trigger mode is set to 'pulse_width' the length of the trigger signal controls the actual image height. This mode is especially useful in combination with line scan cameras. Default: 'edge'.
	'volatile'		'enable', 'disable'		In the volatile mode the two image acquisition interface buffers are used directly to store HALCON images. This is the fastest mode avoiding to copy raw images in memory. However, be aware that older images are overwritten again and again as a side-effect. Thus, you can only process one image while you grab another image. Older images are invalid! Default: 'disable'.

Parameters for get_framegrabber_param():

Additional parameters supported by get_framegrabber_param only. Note that all parameters supported by set_framegrabber_param can also be accessed by get_framegrabber_param. Furthermore, corresponding to the parameters supported by set_framegrabber_param, there may exist additional read-only parameters with the following postfixes:

• '_description': These parameters provide the tooltip of the corresponding parameter as a string.
• '_range': These parameters provide the minimum, maximum, stepwidth, and default values for the corresponding integer or float parameter as a tuple with 4 elements, e.g., get_framegrabber_param(..,'exposure_range',..) will return the output tuple [min,max,step,default]. Optionally, this tuple can also contain additional valid string values like 'auto' or 'manual'.
• '_values': These parameters provide the valid value list for the corresponding parameter as a tuple, e.g., get_framegrabber_param(..,'volatile_values',..) will return the output tuple ['enable','disable'].

	'revision'		revision		The revision number of the HALCON INSPECTA5 image acquisition interface.

External Triggering

If you enable this mode via open_framegrabber or set_framegrabber_param(AcqHandle, 'ExternalTrigger', 'enable'), one image will be acquired with the trigger and stored in the buffer, if you activated this via grab_image_start. Thus, your HALCON application can process other data without loosing the frame. After activating the external trigger for one frame with grab_image_start, both grab_image and grab_image_async simply will return the next frame (or wait if it has not been acquired so far). Note that the external trigger is only allowed for cameras, that are asynchronous resettable, e.g., the Mikroton MC 13xx cameras.

Release Notes

• Revision 4.0 (Dec 1, 2008):
  • HALCON 9.0 version of the interface (included in HALCON 9.0 DVD).
• Revision 3.3 (Aug 13, 2008):
  • info_framegrabber('info_boards') now returns an empty string instead of a NULL pointer to enable the basic auto-detection of actually available devices in HDevelop.
• Revision 3.2 (Apr 22, 2008):
  • Added read-only parameters with postfix '_description', '_range', and '_values' to enable the easy parameterization via a generic graphical user interface.
• Revision 3.1 (Mar 27, 2008):
  • The first synchronous grab via grab_image after a preceeding asynchronous grab returned an old image. This bug has been fixed.
• Revision 3.0 (May 15, 2007):
  • HALCON 8.0 version of the interface (included in HALCON 8.0 DVD).
• Revision 2.0 (Oct 24, 2005):
  • First official release.