In Camera Settings you define the type of camera and the connecting board and port.

Using the camera property dialog you can define camera properties like exposure, shutter, contrast and brightness.

When selecting a camera you can activate the camera menu with a mouse right-click. The menu contains the following items:

• New - creates a new camera
• Edit - activates the camera property dialog
• Delete - removes camera from list
• Calibration - activates camera calibration properties dialog
• Reset - reloads camera driver - can be used to rescan camera using the firegrab.dll DirectX driver
• Cameradriver - used to change the current scorpion camera driver
• Show Button - used to toggle button i camera pane
• Help - activate Scorpion help

Selecting or changing the Scorpion Camera Driver DLL

To select the active camera interface - r-click the mouse in the Camera Settings. A scorpion camera driver is implemented as an dll. The default camera drivers is firegrab.dll

More information about  Scorpion Camera Support

Changing the Properties of a Camera

Double-click the camera or select it and press the Edit button, and you see detailed information. This varies dependant on the camera.

By choosing Live video, the system will take pictures at fastest possible speed. This is useful when adjusting the camera or to get an overview of image variations – if for instance the light conditions have changed. In multi image type systems, you can decide to run live video for one type of image or for all types.

Note: If Live Video stops - toggle the live video check box.

The dialogs described in this section assumes that the Scorpion DirectX driver - firegrab.dll - is loaded.

• HW-Trigger - default - off - require hw camera support
  • Note: see Advanced HWTrigger support

Note: The grabber and port # is only active for framegrabber systems

Pressing the advanced button will active the camera's own property dialogs.

Advanced

• State - Closed | Open - reflects the camera status
• Color Images - default off - activate color image processing
• Continuous Video Stream - default on - off will pause the graph between image capture - reduces cpu consumption - may not be  supported by every wdm-driver
• HWTrigger support - activate to support hw trigger on DirectX compatible cameras.
  • Note 1: Always enabled on cameras using Unibrain WDM driver.
  • Note 2: Added to avoid deadlock while querying the camera's HWtrigger capabilities.
  • Note 3: To manually unblock a camera entered this mode, edit the hwtrigger option (hwtrigger=0) in the FireGrab.ini configuration file located at the scorpion profile directory after closing Scorpion and the profile.
• Capabilities - pressing this button will print the camera capabilities in the console window

Image Averaging

• Number of images to average - used to improve image  quality
• Recursive Filter - To be documented

Filters

• Static Image Detection - To be documented
• Trigger Delay
  • Number of images to skip after trigger

Note: Trigger Delay can be used to get rid of bad image. Some camera produces a first distorted image after the graph is started - This can be needed when deactivating Continuous Video Stream

Source

The Source dialog is specific to each wdm-driver. The dialog below is from an Imaging Source Camera DFK-31F03.

• Frame Rate - the number of images streamed
  • Check the Bandwidth table when designing firewire muliti camera system - when working with many camera you may need to increase the system bandwidth by adding multiple firewire interface cards
• Color Space - Select the Color format
  • For black and white images Y800 is preferred
  • Color formats are Y411, Y422 and RGB

Note: The Frame Rate shall be set as low as the application allows to reduce cpu resource consumption - in multi camera systems another way to reduce bandwidth requirement is to use hw-triggered cameras.

Note: Compressed color formats use less bandwidth and computer resources - like Y411 rather than RGB24.

Format

The Source dialog is specific to each wdm-driver - below the Imaging Source DFK-31F03 is used as an example.

More information about Unibrain Fire-I Camera Properties.