Using Point Grey Firefly Camera instead of Flea 3 - Camera not Configuring during machine vision setup

Hi Josh,

Welcome to the DLP forums and thank you for your question!! I'm sorry you're having difficulty getting the Lightcrafter 4500 application up and running.

Are you using the Firewire version or the USB version of your camera?

Paul

I appreciate the reply. I am using the USB version of my Firefly camera. The exact camera model I am using is the Firefly MV 0.3 MP Mono USB 2.0. It runs on the same FlyCapture2 SDK that the Flea3 uses.

Thanks Josh.

Are you able to use the Point Grey FlyCapture software to connect to the camera and see an image on your computer monitor?

Just to confirm, you've gone through and installed all the necessary pieces of software described in the user's guide?

-Paul

Yes I get a live video feed from the camera through the FlyCature software. And I have also downloaded all the necessary pieces of software. The Lightcrafter 4500 projector connects fine and I'm able to upload the firmware to it from step "2: Prepare DLP Lightcrafter4500 "

That's good to hear! Thank you for confirming the software installations.

My next thought is that perhaps the settings in the config_camera.txt file are not correct. Can you open that file and make sure that the shutter type, trigger polarity, etc. are all set correctly?

I don't know which values would make it "set correctly". I only know that it is a global shutter and not a rolling shutter. I just put in the values that the manual said to put in, but thats assuming your using a Flea3 camera. This is what is in the config_camera.txt file currently:

CAMERA_PARAMETERS_FRAME_BUFFER_SIZE = 72

####################
##OpenCV Camera #
####################
#OPENCV_CAM_PARAMETERS_EXPOSURE = 0


####################
##PointGrey Camera #
####################
PG_FLYCAP_PARAMETERS_GAIN_DB = 18
# For below parameter set
# Rolling shutter color Camera - MONO8
# Global shutter Monochrome camera - RAW8
PG_FLYCAP_PARAMETERS_PIXEL_FORMAT = RAW8
PG_FLYCAP_PARAMETERS_SHUTTER_EXPOSURE_MS = 66
PG_FLYCAP_PARAMETERS_FRAME_RATE_HZ = 15
PG_FLYCAP_PARAMETERS_STROBE_SOURCE = 2
PG_FLYCAP_PARAMETERS_STROBE_ENABLE = 1
PG_FLYCAP_PARAMETERS_STROBE_POLARITY = 1
# For below parameter
# Rolling shutter color camera - 5.0
# Glocal shutter Monochrome camera - 0.0
PG_FLYCAP_PARAMETERS_STROBE_DELAY = 0.0
PG_FLYCAP_PARAMETERS_STROBE_DURATION = 1.0
PG_FLYCAP_PARAMETERS_AUTOEXPOSURE = 0
PG_FLYCAP_PARAMETERS_EXPOSURE = 1.0

Those look right to me. I'll need to look into the source code and see if I can figure out the source the error in more detail. Thank you for your patience - I'm sorry about the difficulties.

Paul

Hi Josh,

Can you set the camera up to be in mono8 mode? Use the FlyCap2 software to do this. You'll find it in the settings window where I have indicated below:

Once you've done that, try re-running the TI design again and see if there error goes away.

Thanks,

Paul

Yeah I went to change it to mono8, but it actually already is in mono8 mode by default. The only other option is mono16.

Josh,

Let me tell you what I've found and maybe you can help me brainstorm a solution. If you download the dlp-alc-lightcrafter-sdk, you'll be able to get the source code for this project.

In the pg_flycap2_c.cpp file, I found where the error is coming from - it has to do with the camera's Format 7 settings. The following are lines 261 to 271 of that code:

   // Check that Format7 settings are valid
    BOOL format7_settings_valid = false;
    fc2Format7PacketInfo format7_packet_info;
    camera_error = fc2ValidateFormat7Settings((*camera_context),&format7_settings_new,&format7_settings_valid,&format7_packet_info);
    if(camera_error != FC2_ERROR_OK)
    {
        this->debug_.Msg("fc2ValidateFormat7Settings FAILED, camera NOT setup!");
        ret.AddError(PG_FLYCAP_C_SET_FORMAT_7_FAILED);
        ret.AddError(CAMERA_NOT_SETUP);
        return ret;
    }

It appears that some portion of the Format 7 settings are unable to be validated correctly. This leads me to believe that some camera setting is not what is expected, but I'm not exactly sure what that setting would be. 

I'm going to keep digging into this but I wanted to let you know where I was and see if you'd be able to work in parallel.

Thanks,

Paul

 

Yeah I found that same code too. I'm looking into it as well, but my experience with C++ is limited. I appreciate the help Paul.

Hi Josh,

Sorry for the delay, it's been a busy week.

I can't say that I've found much, but I'm wondering what happens if you try to use the OpenCV interface rather than the native camera interface. Can you try changing the camera type in the []_Scan_Application_Config.txt file?

#Camera type
# 0 - Uses OpenCV camera interface
# 1 - Native camera interface - PointGrey
CAMERA_TYPE = 0

Another thought would be to reach out to PointGrey support and ask them how Format 7 works and what the differences are between the two cameras.

Let me know the result of changing the camera type and if you've had any other success.
-Paul

I actually did try using opencv to run the camera and it went to my latptops webcam by default. However, I found a point grey grasshopper camera and tried using that and everything actually worked fine; no problems. My theory is that the grasshopper and flea both use USB 3.0 ports, while the firefly is a basic USB 2.0, and that causes some sort of error. I can not know for sure. But everything is working fine at the moment and it is no longer a problem for me. Thanks for all your help I appreciate it!

Glad you got something working! Let us know if anything else comes up.

Paul