GenICam Basics
This topic covers the following contents: Introduction, Mechanism and Supporting GenICam.
Introduction
GenICam is a common machine vision industry standard developed by the European Machine Vision Association (EMVA), which allows the use of a unified programming interface to control machine vision cameras.
GenICam provides a widely-applicable programming interface that provides an end-to-end configuration interface for standard interfaces including GigE Vision, USB 3.0 Vision, Camera Link, and IEEE 1394.
For cameras compliant with GenICam, GenICam-compliant machine vision software such as HALCON (MVTec), VisionPro (Cognex) can be used to conveniently connect and control cameras without camera-specific configuration.
Mechanism
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A GenICam-compliant camera provides an XML descriptor file, which describes the camera parameters and indicates the features and functions provided by the camera. A GenICam-compatible machine vision software converts the XML file into the GenAPI application programming interfaces or graphical user interface elements.
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A GenICam-compatible machine vision software converts the XML file into the GenAPI application programming interfaces or graphical user interface elements.
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By using the application programming interfaces or graphical user interface on the machine vision software, you can easily access and use the features and functions provided by the camera.
For more information about GenICam, please visit:GenICam.
Supporting GenICam
After upgrading the camera firmware to 2.0.0 or above, you can control cameras with third-party machine vision software such as HALCON (MVTec) and VisionPro (Cognex).
For camera parameters provided for GenICam by the camera and their description, refer to Camera Parameters Supported for GenICam.
If you want to connect and manage the camera with the HALCON software, refer to HALCON: Connect to Camera, Perform Image Capturing, and Adjust Parameters.