Tag: camera

Setup of Allied Vision Camera with VimbaSDK and ROS node

How to setup and use avt_vimba_camera node

Assuming an x86_64 system and a GiGE PoE camera

http://wiki.ros.org/avt_vimba_camera

Driver Setup

  1. Download the Vimba SDK from Allied Vision website https://www.alliedvision.com/en/products/software.html
  2. Extract the contents of the file
  3. Go to Vimba_2_1/VimbaGigETL/
  4. Execute sudo ./Install.sh. This will add a couple of files inside /etc/profile.d
    • VimbaGigETL_64bit.sh
    • VimbaGigETL_32bit.sh
  5. The SDK will ask you to logout and login again. If you don’t wish to do so, execute source /etc/profile.d/VimbaGigETL_64bit.sh
  6. Connect the camera.
  7. You’re ready to use the camera.

Change Camera IP Address

Initially the camera is running on DHCP mode. If you wish to change this.

  1. Go to Vimba_2_1/Tools/Viewer/Bin/x86_64bit/
  2. Execute sudo -E ./VimbaViewer
  3. Right Click the camera and Press Open CONFIG
  4. Go to the Tree and Open the GiGE root and the configuration subnode
  5. Change IP Configuration Mode to Persistent
  6. Move to the Persistent tree and change the Persistent IP Address to the desired value.
  7. Finally Click on IP Configuration Apply and click the Execute button
  8. Close the CONFIG MODE window
  9. After a few moments, the camera will appear showing the selected IP.

View Image Stream from Camera

  1. Go to Vimba_2_1/Tools/Viewer/Bin/x86_64bit/
  2. Execute sudo -E ./VimbaViewer
  3. Right Click the camera while in the viewer
  4. Select Open FULL ACCESS
  5. A new Window will appear, press the Blue Play button

ROS Node setup

  1. Once the driver is working, install the node using sudo apt-get install ros-xxxx-avt-vimba-camera. Where xxxx represents your ROS distro.
  2. From Autoware launch in a sourced terminal roslaunch runtime_manager avt_camera.launch guid:=SERIALNUMBER or roslaunch runtime_manager avt_camera.launch ip:=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

SERIAL NUMBER or IP Address were previously obtained from the Configuration tool.

Dynamic configuration

The avt_vimba_camera package supports dynamic configuration.

Once the node is running execute rosrun dynamic_reconfigure dynparam get /avt_camera to get all the supported parameters.

To change one execute:
rosrun dynamic_reconfigure dynparam set /avt_camera exposure_auto_max 500000

this will update the maximum auto exposure time to 500 ms.

For extra details on dynamic_reconfigure check: http://wiki.ros.org/dynamic_reconfigure