GenICam Plugin: Issue with Mikrotron EoSens 4CXP with Active Silicon FireBird CoaXPress Frame Grabber (Quad CXP-6)

[Moritz Straub]

I want to use a Mikrotron EoSens 4CXP with an Active Silicon FireBird CoaXPress Frame Grabber (Quad CXP-6).

ITOM 4.0.0 (same as with 3.2.1 and 3.2.0) doesn’t seem to work. When e.g. executing the attached ‘itom_example.py’, I get a ‘timeout occurred' error, see 'itom_console_4.0.0.txt’ for the output of the console.

I discovered, that I can use my hardware setup with ITOM 3.1.0. When using this version, I get an image from executing the same script as above, see 'itom_console_3.1.0.txt’ for the output of the console.

Unfortunately, I cannot see the exact reason for this issue, but when looking into the commits I can identify the commit 'afa9a19' as the first non-working. This seems rather strange to me, since this commit states 'GenICam: first running version for CoaXPress cameras' and even adds my hardware as tested (This plugin has been tested with the following cameras: … Mikrotron (CoaXPress) with Active Silicon Framegrabber (FireBird) …).

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[M. Gronle]

Hi Moritz,

Thanks for writing this issue. I will try to figure some things out but might probably need a little bit of help from you since I don't have access to a Mikrotron camera. I adapted the Genicam for CoaXPress cameras (which is much more complicated than USB or GigE) with the help of a student from another university a couple of years ago.

However I guess that I cannot start analyzing the problem within the next two weeks, since I am on holidays with limited internet access.

Best regards

Marc Gronle

[Moritz Straub]

Hi Marc,

Thank you for the quick response. I’ll assist you if possible. Since 3.1.0 is working as a workaround, the issue is not urgent and thus no need to hurry.

Best regards

Moritz Straub

[M. Gronle]

Hi Moritz,

if you have time, could you please check the values of the following parameters, e.g. using print(getParam(“xxx”)) before you start with startDevice:

• AcquisitionMode
• TriggerMode
• TriggerSource

Please modify your script and explicitily set AcquisitionMode to either Continuous or SingleFrame (I hope that both are possible, else one of these).

Please add a print-statement in python before acquire, startDevice and copyVal, such that I can better identify these commands in your log file.

Then please try the following combinations of the parameters above:

AcquisitionMode=Continuous, TriggerMode=Off, TriggerSource=Software

AcquisitionMode=Continuous, TriggerMode=On, TriggerSource=Software

AcquisitionMode=SingleFrame, TriggerMode=Off, TriggerSource=Software

AcquisitionMode=SingleFrame, TriggerMode=On, TriggerSource=Software

If you would provide the log files for these configurations, I hope to get more information. It would be sufficient to get the logs from the first setParam command on, e.g. by

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cam = dataIO('GenICam', GenTLProducer='Active Silicon', verbose=3)
clc()  # clear the command line
cam.setParam('integration_time', 0.019998)
cam.setParam('TriggerMode', 'Off')
cam.setParam('AcquisitionFrameRate', 50)
cam.setParam('numBuffers', 5)

img = dataObject()
print("startDevice")
cam.startDevice()
print("acquire")
cam.acquire()
print("copyVal")
cam.copyVal(img)
plot(img)

Cheers

Marc

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[Moritz Straub]

Hi Marc,

it seem like the setParam command sets the correct values. I can only choose Continuous as the AcquisitionMode, SingleFrame does not exist for my setup. As for the TriggerMode , I tried both options resulting in the same error (see itom_4.0.0_triggermode_off.txt and itom_4.0.0_triggermode_on.txt). The text files contain the console output for verbose level 5. Are there any other log files I could provide?

Here is the code I used:

cam = dataIO('GenICam', GenTLProducer='Active Silicon', verbose=5)
clc()
cam.setParam('integration_time', 0.019998)
cam.setParam('AcquisitionFrameRate', 50)
cam.setParam('numBuffers', 5)

cam.setParam('AcquisitionMode', 'Continuous') # Continuous | SingleFrame
print(cam.getParam('AcquisitionMode'))
cam.setParam('TriggerMode', 'Off') # On | Off
print(cam.getParam('TriggerMode'))
cam.setParam('TriggerSource', 'Software')
print(cam.getParam('TriggerSource'))

img = dataObject()
print('startDevice')
cam.startDevice()
print('acquire')
cam.acquire()
print('copyVal')
cam.copyVal(img)
plot(img)
cam.stopDevice()
del cam

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Best regards

Moritz

[M. Gronle]

Intermediate results:

• The problem seems to be the command

  m_stream->flushBuffers(GenTL::ACQ_QUEUE_ALL_TO_INPUT);

  in the startDevice(…) method.

• If this command is removed, the denoted camera from Mikrotron with an ActiveSilicon framegrabber seems to work.

• However, this command has been added in commit 58531b66 in order to support this “old” camera: Allied Vision, Goldeye G-008 SWIR (GigE)
• Cameras from Ximea, Baumer, other Allied Vision cameras, cameras from Vistek… seem to work without this command

Question:

The same command is also called if a timeout occurs when waiting for new buffers. How to handle this there?

This has to be tested a little bit more. Intermediate solution:
Make an additional init parameter to enable / disable this specific flush command in both startDevice() and waitForNewestBuffer(). Default: disabled.

Todo: Test this with other cameras, especially the Goldeye G-008 SWIR.

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[M. Gronle]

Fixes in pull request #16