eGrabber: A single API for GigE Vision, CoaXPress & Camera Link cameras

Product / 04.2022


For a machine vision application developer, choosing the right camera interface may sometimes be a difficult decision. The eGrabber Image Acquisition software of Euresys is a set of image acquisition drivers, libraries and tools compatible with GigE Vision, CoaXPress and Camera Link cameras.


Figure 1 | eGrabber Studio is the evaluation and demonstration application of eGrabber. It allows testing image acquisition, checking and configuring the parameters of the cameras and frame grabbers and recording the acquired video onto the hard disk.

Initially developed as the driver and user Application Programming Interface (API) of Euresys frame grabbers, eGrabber features a high-level, object oriented, user-friendly API compatible with multiple programming languages (C++, C# and Python).
 

Gigelink

eGrabber Gigelink, a new optional add-on to eGrabber, provides a universal, hardware-independent access to GigE Vision cameras. eGrabber Gigelink allows the user to seamlessly integrate GigE Vision cameras from multiple brands in the same application, bypassing the proprietary camera drivers. With eGrabber, programmers can then use the same concepts, objects, and function calls to acquire images from GigE Vision cameras of any brand, from any CoaXPress cameras (via the Euresys Coaxlink frame grabbers) and any Camera Link camera (via the announced Euresys Grablink Duo frame grabber). Interfacing legacy machine vision infrastructure together with more recent technology, eGrabber allows a functional extension at a reduced incremental cost. This also simplifies the combination of various acquisition technologies, e.g. combining image acquisition from a high-resolution CoaXPress line scan camera (to inspect the surface of a moving object) and a low-cost GigE Vision camera (for detecting the limits of the object) becomes straightforward.
 

GenICam GenTL producers

In addition, the eGrabber Driver and eGrabber Gigelink are also official GenICam GenTL producers. They are able to seamlessly connect and provide image acquisition services to any GenTL compatible application. This is useful, for example, to interface to area scan cameras for food, pharma or automotive quality control applications allowing both wide field of view for broad positioning and high-resolution focused detail inspection.
 

User-friendly interface

Also available in the same ecosystem, eGrabber Studio is the evaluation and demonstration application of eGrabber. It allows testing image acquisition, checking and configuring the parameters (GenAPI features) of the cameras and frame grabbers and recording the acquired video onto the hard disk. Live histogram, profile and pixel information display are also available.



Image 2 | The eGrabber Image Acquisition software is a set of image acquisition drivers, libraries and tools compatible with GigE Vision, CoaXPress and Camera Link cameras.
 

Debugging

Memento is the debugging tool of the eGrabber ecosystem. During image acquisition, it records a detailed log of events related to the camera, the frame grabber and its driver, as well as the host application. The Memento driver records events such as driver function calls, callbacks, triggers received by the frame grabber, strobe signals sent to the light controller or camera control signals, along with precise time stamps and detailed context information. In the Memento application, users can display a list of these events with their associated time stamp and useful context information. The events listed are also displayed in a timeline. Different levels of verbosity are used to filter and display only the most crucial messages or to provide much more detailed log information. Additional display and highlighting options are available based, among others, on the origin or nature of the messages. Search features also allow you to find back messages based on their content. Memento assists developers during application development and debugging, as well as system operation. It helps them understand the behavior of the machine and pin down the cause of issues such as missed triggers or lost images.
 

Real-time recording

For applications that, for archiving or diagnosis purposes, require real-time recording of the video, eGrabber Recorder provides video recording services to hard drives. It is compatible with hard disk drives (HDD) as well as solid state drives (SSD). More particularly, fast SSDs (such as NVMe PCIe Gen 3×8 or Gen 4×4 M.2 SSDs) have become affordable and their bandwidth is now compatible with the requirements of the faster cameras available. eGrabber Recorder focuses on performance. The library has been highly optimized to efficiently and continuously store the video stream at the maximum bandwidth of these disks, up to their storage capacity.
 

Bridge to Open eVision

Open eVision is a set of image analysis libraries and software tools allowing the processing of images for text and code reading, matching and measurements, 3D processing and Deep Learning inspection. eGrabber Bridge gives access to these libraries by ensuring the smooth interfacing with the camera (handshake and data formats). It is completed by Open eVision Studio, a free evaluation and prototyping application allowing tuning, testing and code generation for the selected Open eVision libraries.

An inVision news article