Coaxlink Driver 3.2 Release Notes - Euresysdownloads.euresys.com/PackageFiles/COAXLINK/3.2.0/...4 Coaxlink Driver 3.2 Release Notes Introduction Introduction Supported Products Product

Release NotesCoaxlink Driver 3.2

© EURESYS s.a. 2014 - Document version 3.2.412 built on 2014-11-20

2 Coaxlink Driver 3.2 Release Notes Disclaimer

EURESYS s.a. shall retain all property rights, title and interest of the documentation of the hardware and the software,and of the trademarks of EURESYS s.a. All the names of companies and products mentioned in the documentationmay be the trademarks of their respective owners. The licensing, use, leasing, loaning, translation, reproduction,copying or modification of the hardware or the software, brands or documentation of EURESYS s.a. contained inthis book, is not allowed without prior notice. EURESYS s.a. may modify the product specification or change theinformation given in this documentation at any time, at its discretion, and without prior notice. EURESYS s.a. shallnot be liable for any loss of or damage to revenues, profits, goodwill, data, information systems or other special,incidental, indirect, consequential or punitive damages of any kind arising in connection with the use of the hardwareor the software of EURESYS s.a. or resulting of omissions or errors in this documentation.

3Contents Coaxlink Driver 3.2 Release Notes

Contents

Introduction....................................................................................................................................................... 4Supported Products..................................................................................................................................................4Supported Product & Firmware Combinations........................................................................................................ 4Supported Operating Systems................................................................................................................................. 5Supported Development Tools.................................................................................................................................5Software Tools..........................................................................................................................................................6

What's New?.....................................................................................................................................................7Added Product..........................................................................................................................................................7Added Firmware....................................................................................................................................................... 7Updated Firmware.................................................................................................................................................... 7Updated Operating Systems Support...................................................................................................................... 7Added Features........................................................................................................................................................ 8Updated Features.....................................................................................................................................................9Solved Issues......................................................................................................................................................... 11

Known Issues................................................................................................................................................12Deviations from the CoaXPress specification........................................................................................................12Deviations from the GenTL specification...............................................................................................................12Memento Backward Compatibility..........................................................................................................................14

4 Coaxlink Driver 3.2 Release Notes Introduction

Introduction

Supported Products

Product Code & Denomination Description Icon

PC1630 – Coaxlink Mono CXP-6 DIN 1 / 4-lane PCIe Gen2 CoaXPress frame grabber Mono

PC1631 – Coaxlink Duo CXP-6 DIN 2 / 4-lane PCIe Gen2 CoaXPress frame grabber Duo

PC1632 – Coaxlink Quad CXP-6 DIN 4 / 4-lane PCIe Gen2 CoaXPress frame grabber Quad

Note: Icons are used in this document for tagging product-specific content.

Supported Product & Firmware Combinations

Target Product FirmwareVariant

FirmwareVersion #

Description

PC1630 – Coaxlink Mono 1-camera 110 or higher 1 camera having 1 connection

1-camera 110 or higher 1 camera having 1 or 2 connectionsPC1631 – Coaxlink Duo

2-camera 110 or higher 2 cameras having 1 connection

PC1632 – Coaxlink Quad 1-camera 110 or higher 1 camera having 1, 2 or 4 connections

5Introduction Coaxlink Driver 3.2 Release Notes

Supported Operating Systems

Windows

OS Version Additional Information

x86 (32-bit)Microsoft Windows 7

x86-64 (64-bit)

Service Pack 1

x86 (32-bit)Microsoft Windows 8

x86-64 (64-bit)

-

Linux

The Coaxlink Driver is designed to be distribution-independent on x86 and x64 platforms. It is expected to work witha wide range of distributions.This release has been validated with the following distribution(s):

OS Version Additional Information

x86 (32-bit)Linux distribution Ubuntu 14.04

x86-64 (64-bit)

Kernel Version 3.13

Supported Development Tools

The Coaxlink driver is supplied as GenICam GenTL producer libraries (coaxlink.cti):

An x86 dynamic library designed to be used with ISO-compliant C/C++ compilers for the development of x86applications.An x86_64 dynamic library designed to be used with ISO-compliant C/C++ compilers for the development ofx86_64 applications.

The Coaxlink cards should be usable with any development tool that supports at least one of these interfaces.

6 Coaxlink Driver 3.2 Release Notes Introduction

Software Tools

The following software tools are delivered together with the Coaxlink Driver:

Tool Name Tool Description

Coaxlink Firmware Manager Command-line tool for installing or upgrading the firmware embedded on theCoaxlink cards.

GenICam Browser (64-bit) 64-bit version of the GUI tool giving access to all the GenICam features exposed bythe GenTL Producer(s) in your system

GenICam Browser 32-bit version of the GenICam browser

GenTL Console (64-bit) 64-bit version of the command-line tool giving access to all the functions andcommands exposed by the Euresys GenTL Producer

GenTL Console 32-bit version of the GenTL Console

7What's New? Coaxlink Driver 3.2 Release Notes

What's New?

Added Product

There are no addition to the list of supported products with this release.

Added Firmware

This release introduces the following product/firmware combination:

Target Product Firmware Denomination Description

PC1631 – Coaxlink Duo 2-camera 2 cameras having 1 connection

Updated Firmware

This release comes with a new firmware version for all the supported product and firmware combinations.

Note: It is required to apply the firmware update procedure prior to using this Coaxlink Driver.

Updated Operating Systems Support

There are no changes to the list of supported operating systems with this release.

8 Coaxlink Driver 3.2 Release Notes What's New?

Added Features

Version 3.2

CoaXPress Host Interface Features

Feature Name Feature Description

2-camera Capability of connecting 2 cameras having 1 connection on PC1631 – Coaxlink Duo

Camera Control and Illumination Control Features


Camera cycle triggering Capability of triggering camera cycles using software commands or I/O Toolbox events

C2C Link Capability of synchronizing multiples devices attached to one or more Coaxlink cardsbelonging to the same PC.

System I/O Features


Polarity control Capability to select the polarity of all I/O ports

Glitch-removal filter Configurable glitch-removal filter on all input-capable I/O ports

Direction control Configurable direction on TTLIO system I/O ports

Driver control Configurable output driver on TTLIO system I/O ports (TTL, open-emitter, open-collector)

Global port state readout Capability to read the state of all ports in a single operation

Line source selection Any output-capable system I/O port can be sourced by:

Any bit of the user output registerThe strobe output of the CICThe camera trigger output of the CIC

I/O Toolbox Features


LINE Tool Capability of detecting transitions on any input-capable System I/O line

Coaxlink Firmware Manager Tool


Install Command Add install command to upload a different firmware variant.


Version 3.1

Software Tools


GenICam Browser Beta version of a software tool implementing a GenICam feature browser and providing thecapability to capture and display images from CoaXPress cameras using Coaxlink cards.

Version 3.0

GenTL Console Features

Feature Name Feature Improvement Description

Display size settings The new options --displaywidth and --displayheight of the gentl viewcommand allows the display size to be manually set.

RGB display formats gentl.exe is capable to display 8-bit RGB, 8-bit BGR, 8bit RGBalpha , 8-bit BGRalpha

Grab N images The new gentl grab command acquires N images and stores them using any of thefollowing image file format: .tiff, .bmp or .png.

CPU cores The new common flag -j allows the user to specify the max number of CPU cores thatgentl.exe is allowed to use.

Updated Features

Version 3.2



Plug and Play Add the capability of detecting CoaXPress 1.1 devices.

The CoaXPress Host Interface of Coaxlink now supports:

CoaXPress 1.0 devicesCoaXPress 1.1 devices

StreamPacketSizeMax Increased default value from 256 to 16K

10 Coaxlink Driver 3.2 Release Notes What's New?

Data Stream Features


Device Pixel Formats Add the capability of acquiring 10-/12-/14-/16-bit monochrome and 24-bit packed RGB datastreams.

The Coaxlink Driver now supports device data streams having any of the following pixelformats:

Mono8, Mono10, Mono12, Mono14 and Mono16BayerGR8, BayerRG8, BayerGB8, BayerBG8RGB8

GenTL Buffer Module


DSGetBufferInfo The following DSGetBufferInfo commands are now available:

BUFFER_INFO_WIDTH, BUFFER_INFO_HEIGHT, BUFFER_INFO_XOFFSET,BUFFER_INFO_YOFFSET, BUFFER_INFO_XPADDING,BUFFER_INFO_YPADDING, BUFFER_INFO_FRAMEID,BUFFER_INFO_IMAGEPRESENT, BUFFER_INFO_IMAGEOFFSET,BUFFER_INFO_PIXELFORMAT, BUFFER_INFO_PIXELFORMAT_NAMESPACE,BUFFER_INFO_DELIVERED_IMAGEHEIGHT, BUFFER_INFO_PIXEL_ENDIANNESS,BUFFER_INFO_TIMESTAMP_NS

Time Stamp Use "start of camera readout" hardware time stamp as buffer time stamp

GenAPI


Selectors The following handle shortcut notation for working with selectors are now available:

Feature[Selector=SelectorValue] or simply Feature[SelectorValue]Feature[Selector1=SelectorValue1,Selector2=SelectorValue2]

@-commands The following @-commands are now available: @help, @features, @ee, @selectors

GenTL Console Tool


Remote XML Added --remotexml option

GenTL Producer C/C++ API


SharedGenTL New SharedGenTL class provided in EuresysSharedGenTL.h


Version 3.1



Plug and Play Revised CoaXPress link discovery and link configuration.

PoCXP The start-up state of PoCXP is now AUTO.

It was OFF in previous versions of the Coaxlink Driver.

Solved Issues

Handling of "bad enum values" retrieved from the camera in gentl.exe

With releases prior to 3.2, the "bad enum values" retrieved from the camera were incorrectly handled.

STREAM_INFO_IS_GRABBING

With releases prior to 3.0, the value returned by STREAM_INFO_IS_GRABBING was not correct.

LineStatus and LineStatusAll

With releases prior to 3.0:

The bit assignments of LineStatusAll was incorrect.The value reported by LineStatus[sel] didn't correspond to the selected line.

Boolean nodes without On/Off values in GenAPI

With releases prior to 3.0, the Euresys GenAPI implementation didn't handle Boolean nodes without On/Off elements.

Handling of color images in gentl.exe

With releases prior to 3.0, the RGB images were incorrectly displayed as BGR images.

CoaXPress Link Configuration Discovery

With releases prior to 2.0, setting remote device LinkConfig/ConnectionConfig was not reliable.

12 Coaxlink Driver 3.2 Release Notes Known Issues

Known Issues

Deviations from the CoaXPress specification

Device to Host Connection Schemes

The Coaxlink standard suggests that Devices (camera) can be connected to the Host (frame grabber) using a freeconnection scheme. Instead, the Host Interface of Coaxlink requires a specific assignment of the Device connectionsto the Host connectors (A, B, C, D).The following table shows, for all applicable product/firmware combinations, the valid device to host connectionschemes using 1-, 2-, or 4-connection CoaXPress links:

Valid Camera Connection Schemes vs. Product and Firmware combinations

Device Connection Link WidthProduct Firmware HostConnector

Device ID ConnectionID

ConnectionName

1 2 4

PC1630 – Coaxlink Mono 1-camera A 0 0 Master ✓

A 0 0 Master ✓ ✓PC1631 – Coaxlink Duo 1-camera

B 0 1 Extension 1 NC ✓

A 0 0 Master ✓PC1631 – Coaxlink Duo 2-camera

B 1 0 Master ✓

A 0 0 Master ✓ ✓ ✓

B 0 1 Extension 1 NC ✓ ✓

C 0 2 Extension 2 NC NC ✓

PC1632 – Coaxlink Quad 1-camera

D 0 3 Extension 3 NC NC ✓

Deviations from the GenTL specification

EventKill

The GenTL specification states that:

13Known Issues Coaxlink Driver 3.2 Release Notes

In case of multiple pending wait operations EventKill causes one wait operation to return with a GC_ERR_ABORTerror code.This means that if more than one thread waits for an event, the EventKill function terminates only one waitoperation and other threads will continue execution.Therefore in order to cancel all pending wait operations EventKill must be called as many times as waitoperations are pending.In case this function is called while no wait operation was pending the next call to EventGetData will return aGC_ERR_ABORT.

This specification is nothing but the behavior description of a particular implementation based on a Windows auto-reset event.This implementation is prone to race conditions: calling EventKill N times in a row to kill exactly N waiting threadsis not guaranteed to work as expected because signaling an event that is already in the signaled state has no effect.In other words, some of the EventKill calls could have no effect.EventKill as specified is not easy to use: How many EventKill calls are required? How many EventGetDatacalls should we expect to return GC_ERR_ABORT? Note that race conditions affect these questions.The Euresys GenTL implementation solves these issues, but differs slightly:

EventKill aborts all pending wait operations on the event handle.EventKill has no impact on subsequent wait operations.

DSStopAcquisition

The GenTL specification states that:

Each call to DSStartAcquisition must be accompanied by a call to DSStopAcquisition.Argument iNumToAcquire passed to DSStartAcquisition sets the number of filled/delivered buffers afterwhich the acquisition engine stops automatically.There must be a call to DSStopAcquisition accompanying each call to DSStartAcquisition even thoughthe stream already stopped because the number of frames to acquire was reached.DSStopAcquisition returns GC_ERR_RESOURCE_IN_USE when the acquisition engine has already beenterminated or has not been started.

The reasons for this behavior is not clear.The Euresys GenTL implementation differs slightly:

DSStopAcquisition will not return GC_ERR_RESOURCE_IN_USE if the data stream hasn't been started.DSStopAcquisition will not return GC_ERR_RESOURCE_IN_USE if the data stream has already been stoppedby a prior call to DSStopAcquisition.DSStopAcquisition will not return GC_ERR_RESOURCE_IN_USE if the data stream has stopped automaticallyafter iNumToAcquire images have been captured.

In other words, DSStopAcquisition is idempotent.With the Euresys implementation, it is not necessary to treat some errors as normal, and race conditions (betweenDSStopAcquisition and the automatic stop of the data stream are avoided. Furthermore, if the data stream hasstopped automatically after acquiring iNumToAcquire images, DSStartAcquisition can be called without firstcalling DSStopAcquisition.

14 Coaxlink Driver 3.2 Release Notes Known Issues

Memento Backward Compatibility

The structure of Memento items has changed since version 3.2 of the Coaxlink Driver; this threads the backwardcompatibility.Consequently, using Memento 3.2 (or higher) is required when using Coaxlink Driver since version 3.2.

Documents

Coaxlink Driver 3.2 Release Notes - Euresysdownloads.euresys.com/PackageFiles/COAXLINK/3.2.0/...4 Coaxlink Driver 3.2 Release Notes Introduction Introduction Supported Products Product