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OPERATING AND USER MANUAL Q-12 CoaXPress series
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Adimec
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5 CONTROL OF THE CAMERA
Access to camera functions and data is provided through the CoaXPress (CXP) protocol. The CoaXPress
interface is GenICam compliant.
GenICam compliant means that an XML is stored in the camera that is used to translate the camera internal
register addresses to the user friendly feature nomenclature as defined by the Standard Features Naming
Convention, SFNC. Basically GenICam is designed to bridge the camera specific register addresses with a
camera and manufacturer independent user interface. The SFNC feature names should be used to operate the
camera.
How to address the SFNC feature names depends on your frame grabber. With CoaXPress frame grabbers a
GenICam Application Programming Interface (GenAPI) is provided. This is a software layer that reads the XML
from the camera and builds a graphical user interface (GUI) to control the camera. The GUI is often refered to as
the GenICam (feature) Browser.
Next to the GUI often a scripting language will be available in which you can use the SFNC naming to program
the camera and frame grabber according to your desired settings.
To illustrate the workflow of CoaXPress we will describe below what will happen if you set the pixel format to 10
bit in a monochrome camera.
When using the GUI:
1. Start the GenICam Browser, The browser will automatically load the XML from the camera and basically
builds a user interface.
2. In the GenICam browser search for the feature called PixelFormat.
3. Change this feature to “Mono10”. Often this can be done by selecting “Mono10” from a drop down list.
When using a scripting language
1. Look up the syntax and language used by your frame grabber.
2. By using the frame grabber syntax and language set the feature PixelFormat to Mono10.
3. Execute the script.
In both cases, for the GUI and for the scripting language, on the background the GenAPI uses the XML to link
the feature name PixelFormat to the camera register address 0x8144. Furthermore it links the feature value
name “Mono10” to a value of 0x1100003. Using the CoaXPress interface, the API will then write a value of
0x1100003 to the camera register 0x8144.
Note:
The above mentioned register addresses and values are only for illustrational purposes. The exact
addresses in your camera might be different.
The above described communication protocol is schematically shown in Figure 5-1.