HALCON 5.2 frame grabber interface for Imagenation PX510, PX610, and PX610A boards

This document provides some information about the HALCON frame grabber interface Px.dll for the Imagenation frame grabbers PX510, PX610, and PX610A from CyberOptics Semiconductor. Registered customers can download the latest revision of this interface from the MVTec WWW server.

Revision: 1.8
System Requirements

• Intel compatible PC with Windows NT 4.0 (Service Pack 4) or Windows 2000.
• Successfully installed Imagenation PX500.sys driver (version 3.0 or higher).
• Imagenation DLL Wpx5_nt.dll (version 3.0 or higher).

This DLL must be within your search path %PATH%. If you do not have this DLL, please contact Imagenation or the vendor from which you bought the frame grabber board.
• HALCON frame grabber interface Px.dll revision 1.8 or higher.

If you have properly installed the interface, Px.dll should reside in bin\i486-nt4 within the HALCON base directory %HALCONROOT% you have chosen during the installation of HALCON.

Features

• Multiple frame grabber boards with multiple cameras.
• Synchronous and asynchronous grabbing.
• External trigger.
• Support of progressive scan cameras (PX610 and PX610A only).
• Subsampling (with automatic switch to field grabbing increasing both quality and speed).
• LUTs.
• Software control of grabbing timeout.
• Software control of gain and video offset.
• Software control of the type of trigger signal.
• Software control of field to be grabbed (first).
• Software control of wait states after switching between cameras.

Limitations

• No cropping of image parts.
• grab_region() and grab_region_async() not supported.

Description

Parameters for open_framegrabber():

 

		Name	'Px'	The name of the HALCON frame grabber interface.
		FGWidth	1, 2, 4, width	The desired image resolution. Use '1' for full resolution, '2' for subsampling by factor 2, '4' for subsampling by factor 4, or the corresponding absolute values like 640, 320, 160 (NTSC) or 768, 384, 192 (PAL). Default: 1.
		FGHeight	1, 2, 4, height	The desired image resolution. Use '1' for full resolution, '2' for subsampling by factor 2, '4' for subsampling by factor 4, or the corresponding absolute values like 480, 240, 120 (NTSC) or 576, 288, 144 (PAL). Default: 1.
		Width	0	The width of the desired image part ('0' stands for the complete image). Default: 0.
		Height	0	The height of the desired image part ('0' stands for the complete image). Default: 0.
		StartRow	0	The row coordinate of the upper left pixel within the desired image part ('0' obviously results in delivering the complete image). Default: 0.
		StartColumn	0	The column coordinate of the upper left pixel within the desired image part ('0' obviously results in delivering the complete image). Default: 0.
		Field	'first', 'second', 'next', 'interlaced', 'progressive'	Specify with which field to start the next grab. Use 'progressive' for progressive scan cameras only. Note that for progressive scan cameras the value 'AUTO' is not allowed for the parameter 'Generic'. Default: 'next'.
		Bits	8	Fixed (PX boards are grayscale only!).
		ColorSpace	---	Ignored.
		Gain	0.5 - 7.97	The desired video gain: A floating point number between 0.5 and 7.97. Default: 1.0.
		ExternalTrigger	'true', 'false'	Activate/deactivate external triggering. Default: 'false'.
		Generic	'AUTO', 'NTSC', 'PAL', 'BL:xxx'	The generic parameter is used to specify the video signal: 'NTSC', 'PAL', or 'AUTO'. The latter will do an automatic analysis of the signal. Note that the 'AUTO' mode is not allowed for progressive scan cameras (see parameter 'Field'). For non-standard cameras, use 'BL:xxx' to specify a blank length of 'xxx' lines. In this case you must specify the absolute image resolution via 'FGWidth' and 'FGHeight'. Default: 'AUTO'.
		Device	'-1', 'board'	The number of the frame grabber board (passed as a string!) or '-1' (default) for an automatic detection (in case you have only one PX board installed in your PC).
		Port	-1, 0, 1, 2, 3	The desired input port or -1 for an automatic detection. Default: -1.
		LineIn	---	Ignored.

Parameters for set_framegrabber_param():

		'volatile'	'enable', 'disable'	In the volatile mode the two frame grabber 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!
		'suppress_errors'	'true', 'false'	If the value 'true' is chosen, PCI transfer errors are not reported. Default: 'false'.
		'trigger_signal'	'falling', 'falling_db', 'rising', 'rising_db', 'low', 'high'	Specify the desired type of trigger signal for external triggering. See the Imagenation documentation for details. Default: 'high'.
		'switch_camera_delay'	blanks	The number of vertical blanks after switching cameras. This value depends on the differences between the cameras connected to one frame grabber board concerning both the video format and the sync (see the Imagenation documentation for details). Default: 0.
		'video_offset'	-128 - 127	An integer value in the range of [-128,127]. This value changes the video offset, that is the D.C. video level. (see the Imagenation documentation for details). Default: -8.
		'gain'	0.5 - 7.97	A floating point number in the range of [0.5,7.97]. This value changes the video gain (see the Imagenation documentation for details). Note that this is one of the standard parameters (used in open_framegrabber()) for which the value can be changed dynamically without closing the frame grabber.
		'grab_timeout'	timeout	Number of milliseconds (integer) after which a pending grabbing command is aborted. The default setting is -1 (no timeout). Note that the interface measures the time interval between the start of the grabbing command and the delivery of the image in the next grab_image() or grab_image_async() operator. It cannot take into account the time when an asynchronous grab was actually finished (which can be long before the image is accessed with the next grabbing command). Thus, timeout settings shorter than the time passing between consecutive grabbing calls might will lead to false timeout alarms when grabbing asynchronously.

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().

		'revision'	revision	The revision number of the HALCON frame grabber interface Px.dll.

Lookup Tables:

Lookup tables can be manipulated using the operators set_framegrabber_lut() and get_framegrabber_lut(). The PX boards use 256 entries per LUT. It is possible to change only a part of a LUT with set_framegrabber_lut(): To do this, entries at the beginning of the LUT that should not be changed must be set to -1.
Release Notes

• Revision 1.8 (May 3, 2000):
• Adaptation to Imagenation driver 3.0.
• Support for the PX610A frame grabber board.
• Bug concerning grabbing full resolution images with Field='first' or Field='second' eliminated.
• Revision 1.7 (March 23, 1999):
• HALCON 5.2 version of the interface (included in the HALCON 5.2 CD).
• Revision 1.6 (September 7, 1998):
• Explicit acquisition of PAL images (see 'Generic' parameter in open_framegrabber()) is now possible.
• Revision 1.5 (May 28, 1998):
• Subsampling of images is now mapped to field grabbing (which increases both speed and quality).
• Timeout for grabbing (see also parameter 'grab_timeout').
• Trigger signals 'falling_db' and 'rising_db'.
• Support of non-standard cameras: Now it is possible to specify both the resolution and the number of blank lines explicitly (this way you should be able to cope with most [progressive scan] cameras on the market).
• LUTs.
• Revision 1.4 (May 1998):
• Adjustable video offset and gain.
• Adjustable number of vertical blanks (wait states) after switching cameras connected to one frame grabber board.
• Revision 1.3 (April 1998):
• Bug concerning multiple cameras per board eliminated.
• Revision 1.1 (March 10, 1998):
• HALCON 5.1 version of the interface (included in the HALCON 5.1 CD).

Last modified: Wed May 3 18:27:17 CEST 2000