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Halcon

HALCON 6.0 Frame Grabber Interface for Imagenation PXR800 Boards

This page provides the documentation of the HALCON frame grabber interface HFGPxr.dll for the PXR800 frame grabber boards from CyberOptics. Registered customers can download the latest revision of this interface from the MVTec WWW server.

Revision: 2.0

System Requirements

  • Intel compatible PC with Windows NT 4.0 (Service Pack 4), Windows 2000 or Windows XP.
  • Successfully installed Imagenation pxr800.sys (or pxr800nt.sys) driver (version 1.2 or higher).
  • Imagenation DLLs pxr800.dll (version 1.2 or higher) and pxrframe.dll (version 1.1 or higher).
    These DLLs must be within your search path %PATH%. If you do not have these DLLs, please contact CyberOptics or the vendor from which you bought the frame grabber board.
  • HALCON frame grabber interface HFGPxr.dll or parHFGPxr.dll, respectively. If you have properly installed the interface, both DLLs should reside in bin\i586-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 standard and progressive scan cameras.
  • LUTs.
  • Cropping of image parts.
  • Software control of grabbing timeout.
  • Software control of gain and video offset.
  • Software control of trigger parameters.
  • Software control of the digital input and output lines.
  • Field grabbing.

Limitations

  • No support of the PXR800 real-time control engine.
  • grab_region and grab_region_async not supported.

Description

Parameters for open_framegrabber():

Name 'Pxr' The name of the HALCON frame grabber interface.
HorizontalResolution 1, width The desired image resolution. Use '1' for full resolution or the corresponding absolute value like 640 (NTSC) or 768 (PAL). Default: 1.
VerticalResolution 1, 2, height The desired image resolution. Use '1' for full resolution, '2' for half resolution (by grabbing only fields instead of frames!), or the corresponding absolute values like 484 (NTSC) or 574 (PAL). Default: 1.
ImageWidth 0, width The width of the desired image part ('0' stands for the complete image). Default: 0.
ImageHeight 0, height The height of the desired image part ('0' stands for the complete image). Default: 0.
StartRow 0, row 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, column 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. Default: 'interlaced'.
BitsPerChannel 8 Fixed (PXR800 boards are 8 bits grayscale only!). Default: 8.
ColorSpace 'gray' Fixed (PXR800 boards are 8 bits grayscale only!). Default: 'gray'.
Gain --- Ignored. See the parameters 'gain_range' and 'fine_gain' below for setting your desired gain values.
ExternalTrigger 'true', 'false' Activate/deactivate external triggering. Default: 'false'.
CameraType 'ntsc', 'pal', 'auto' Specify the video signal: 'ntsc', 'pal', or 'auto'. The latter will do an automatic analysis of the signal. Default: 'auto'.
Device '-1', 'board' The number of the frame grabber board (passed as a string!) or '-1' for accesing the next available grabber. Default: '-1'.
Port 0, 1, 2, 3 The desired input port. Default: 0.
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! Default: 'disable'.
'grab_timeout' timeout Number of milliseconds (integer) after which a pending grabbing command is aborted. 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. Default: 5000.
'trigger_signal' 'rising', 'falling', 'low', 'high' Specify the desired type of trigger event for external triggering. Note that the same trigger event is used for all See the Imagenation documentation for details. Default: 'rising'.
'trigger_mask' mask Specify the desired trigger lines by changing the bits 0..3 in the trigger mask. See the Imagenation documentation for details. Default: 15.
'external_trigger' 'true', 'false' Activate/deactivate external triggering.
'gain_range' 0, 1 If the gain range is 0, the input video is assumed to be normal 1 Volt peak to peak. If the gain range is 1, the input video is amplified by a factor of two before being digitized. This allows full grayscale accuracy for signals of approx. 1/2 Volt peak to peak. Default: 0.
'fine_gain' 0, 1, ... 255 Sets the desired fine gain value (a fine gain of 255 is approx. twice normal contrast). Default: 128.
'video_offset' -128 ... 127 This value changes the video offset, which is digitally added to the pixel data before fine gain is applied (see the Imagenation documentation for details). Default: 0.
'transfer_mode' 'incremental', 'burst' Sets the transfer mode used to transfer the images from the onboard video buffer to system memory (see the Imagenation documentation for details).
'continuous_grabbing' 'enable', 'disable' If the continuous mode is enabled, the frame grabber will continuously capture video data into the onboard buffer memory. In this mode you can achieve full frame rate (see the Imagenation documentation for details). Default: 'disable'.
'termination' '75ohm', 'high_impedance' Specify the type of termination in use for the connected camera (see the Imagenation documentation for details). Default: '75ohm'.
'nyquist_filter' 'enable', 'disable' Activate/deactivate the nyquist filter, which filters out the high-frequency component of the video signal (see the Imagenation documentation for details). Default: 'enable'.
'digital_output' 0 ... 15 Change immediately the state of all four general purpose output lines (the value corresponds to the bits 3:0 of the GPI/O lines).

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 PXR frame grabber interface.
'pxr_revision' sw/hw/fw The revision numbers of the frame grabber hardware and driver as software/hardware/firmware.
'digital_input' 0 ... 15 Read the state of all four general purpose input lines (the value corresponds to the bits 7:4 of the GPI/O lines).

Lookup Tables:

Lookup tables can be manipulated using the operators set_framegrabber_lut and get_framegrabber_lut. The PXR 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 2.0 (Jan 9, 2002):
    • First official release.

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