4. Additional hardware and software requirements
Hardware
The AF51 camera has no internal video or photo recording system and no internal storage
or memory card slot to store recorded video or photos. All recording and storage must be
done by an external host computer (not supplied).
Examples of types of external host computer that may be used with the AF51 are a
desktop, laptop or tablet computer or a smart phone. Such devices must have a USB hub
capable of connecting to the male type A USB connector of the camera (this may require
an adaptor plug – not supplied with the camera).
The operating system of the host computer must be able to can handle communications
with video devices that use the USB Video Class (UVC) protocol and run software that
can use the UVC protocol to control UVC-compatible video devices. Such operating
systems include Linux, macOS, MS Windows (Vista, 7, 8, 10, 11) and Android (4.0 and
later).
The AF51 camera will not work with iOS
(Apple iPhones and iPads) without some
additional specialist interface electronics, the availability, quality and compatibility of
which I have not tested.
Therefore I do not recommend using the AF51 with Apple
iOS devices
.
The host computer you use must be able to supply the 500 mW of USB power required to
power the camera.
Software
No separate drivers are required to use the AF51 camera because the UVC protocol built
into the host computer’s OS acts as a generic driver. For this reason the AF51 does not
come with a driver disk or driver download link.
Software development kit (SDK) and custom programming
You can control the AF51 camera from your own custom software using freely available
software development kits for Linux, Windows and Mac OS.
In Linux the v4l2 application programming interface (API) act as an SDK allowing you to
control all functions of the camera described above.
For Microsoft Windows the SDK for Windows Vista and Windows 7.1 is freely available
for download from Microsoft and contains example programs such as AmCap. These use
the DirectShow API to control all the features of the camera described in this manual.
OptArc AF51 Camera Page 43 of 99 User Guide v1.02