Chapter
3
Reference Manual
IVC-2D
30
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SICK AG • Advanced Industrial Sensors • www.sick.com • All rights reserved
Using IVC Studio
3.2
Handling the Emulator
The Emulator is a software program in IVC Studio that behaves like a hardware camera. It
makes it possible to write or update programs when there is no hardware camera avai-
lable. The Emulator can behave as (emulate) both 2D and 3D cameras. Each product in
IVC Studio can contain several devices, but only one emulated camera.
The main difference between the Emulator and a camera is that the former uses a prede-
fined set of images stored in a dedicated image folder on the PC, whereas the latter views
live images. Not all tools are emulated by the Emulator; these tools are marked with
[Not
emulated]
in the user interface. Interactive setups are not available for non-emulated tools.
The Grab tool functions differently when the Emulator is used. This is described in section
Using the Grab and the Grab Setup Tools below.
The execution time of a tool when using the emulator depends on the performance of the
PC. This time is not the same as the execution time when the tool is executed on a hard-
ware camera. This means that the field “
Time of execution (us)
” in the step program view
cannot be used in a calculation of the expected cycle time for the application when the
emulator is used.
From the
Emulator
menu in the menu bar you can enable and disable the Emulator, and
change its settings. In the Emulator settings dialog you can choose which camera type to
emulate, select which folder to capture pre-recorded images from, and choose to enable
the Emulator automatically when starting IVC Studio.
3.2.1
Preparing images for the Emulator
Instead of viewing live images, the Emulator captures pre-recorded images. Before starting
the Emulator it is thus necessary to prepare images. This is done by recording images that
are captured by a real camera. The images must be saved in the raw format (.raw or .img)
for IVC-3D and IVC-2D, or bitmap (.bmp) for IVC-2D, in a version of IVC Studio that sup-
ports the Emulator. When saving an image, the Grab Setup parameters are stored in the
image file and can be read by the Emulator.
To record images
Use a camera of the same type that you will emulate.
Select or write a program containing a Grab Setup tool defining
how to captures images, a Grab tool to capture the images, and a
Send to FTP tool to store the images in raw format in a selected
folder. The PC receiving the images must have an FTP server
running.
To use recorded
images in the
Choose
Emulator
Æ
Settings…
from the IVC Studio menu bar.
The Emulator settings dialog box is opened.