Basler Camera#

NOTE:

  • Pixel Formats

Camera Model

Tested Pixel Formats

Basler acA1920-40gc

mono8
ycbcr422_8
bayerrggb

Basler acA1920-150uc

mono8
rgb8
bgr8
bayerbggr

  • In case one wants to use any of the bayer pixel-format then bayer2rgb element needs to be used to covert raw bayer data to RGB. Refer the below example pipeline.

       "pipeline": "gencamsrc serial=<DEVICE_SERIAL_NUMBER> pixel-format=bayerrggb name=source ! bayer2rgb ! videoconvert ! video/x-raw,format=BGR ! appsink name=destination"

  • In case one wants to use mono8 image format or wants to work with monochrome camera then change the pixel-format to mono8 in the pipeline. Since gstreamer ingestor expects a BGR image format, a single channel GRAY8 format would be converted to 3 channel BGR format.

    Example pipeline to use mono8 imageformat or work with monochrome basler camera:

       "pipeline": "gencamsrc serial=<DEVICE_SERIAL_NUMBER> pixel-format=mono8 name=source ! videoconvert ! video/x-raw,format=BGR ! appsink name=destination"

  • In case one wants to enable resizing with basler camera vaapipostproc element can be used to specify the height and width parameter in the gstreamer pipeline.

    Example pipeline to enable resizing the frame to 600x600 with basler camera:

       "pipeline": "gencamsrc serial=<DEVICE_SERIAL_NUMBER> pixel-format=<PIXEL_FORMAT> name=source ! vaapipostproc height=600 width=600 ! videoconvert ! video/x-raw,format=BGR ! appsink name=destination"

  • In case one wants to divert the color space conversion to GPU for basler camera vaapipostproc can be used. This can be useful when the CPU% is maxing out due to the input ingestion stream.

    Example pipeline to perform color space conversion from YUY2 to BGRx in GPU with vaapipostproc with basler camera:

      "pipeline": "gencamsrc serial=<DEVICE_SERIAL_NUMBER> pixel-format=<PIXEL_FORMAT> name=source ! vaapipostproc format=bgrx ! videoconvert ! video/x-raw,format=BGR ! appsink name=destination"

    Basler camera hardware triggering

  • If the camera is configured for triggered image acquisition, one can trigger image captures at particular points in time.

  • With respect to hardware triggering if the camera supports it then an electrical signal can be applied to one of the camera’s input lines which can act as a trigger signal.

  • In order to configure the camera for hardware triggering, during our tests we set the following properties of Generic Plugin.

    • trigger-selector=FrameStart - the camera initializes the acquisition of only image

    • acquisition-mode=singleframe - the camera will acquire exactly one image

    • trigger-source=Line1 - the appropriate H/W trigger source needs to be selected

    • trigger-activation=RisingEdge - the appropriate trigger activation parameter need to be selected

    • hw-trigger-timeout=100 - the H/W trigger timeout value in seconds in multiples of 5

      For more information on the properties related to hardware triggering refer Generic-Plugin-readme

    Validated test setup for basler camera hardware triggering

  • In our test setup a python script was used to control a ModBus I/O module to generate a digital output to Opto-insulated input line(Line1) of the basler camera.

  • For testing the hardware trigger functionality Basler acA1920-40gc camera model had been used.

    Note: Other triggering capabilities with different camera models are not tested.