Introduction

In general all Impact Acquire host drivers claim to support any compliant device with any firmware version running on the device. Whenever this is not the case this page will provide some guidelines on what to do. Apart from that all known compatibility issues are listed here.

Things Affecting Every Impact Acquire Driver Package

The Porting Existing Code section describes general changes in the API and lists what needs to be done when things currently used by an application have been changed/removed.
Impact Acquire does not serve as a valid license provider for the discontinued mvIMPACT SDK. As a consequence mvIMPACT SDK licenses bound to a specific Balluff/MATRIX VISION device can only be used with mvIMPACT Acquire packages < 2.25.0. For further guidelines regarding this particular topic please get into contact with the support department of Balluff (ballu.nosp@m.ff@b.nosp@m.alluf.nosp@m.f.de).

Migrating Applications To Impact Acquire 3.0.0 And Higher

Attention: With major release 3.0.0 major changes have been applied to this SDK that might require existing applications to be modified as well.

Changes in Impact Acquire (previously known as mvIMPACT Acquire) known to have a potential impact on existing applications are listed below. If any of the following items is involved in the user application using mvIMPACT Acquire, please adapt it accordingly when migrating to Impact Acquire 3.0.0 or higher.

General Changes

Item	Previously in mvIMPACT Acquire	Currently in Impact Acquire	Comments
GUI application name	wxPropView	ImpactControlCenter
GUI application name	mvDeviceConfigure	DeviceConfigure	A link pretending the existence of the previous application name will be provided for some time but scripts calling the previous name should be adjusted.
GUI application name	mvIPConfigure	IPConfigure
GUI application name	mvGigEConfigure	GigEConfigure
Vendor name reported by various GetInfo functions on GenTL Producer libraries (e.g. `GCGetInfo(..., TL_INFO_VENDOR, ...)`, `GCGetPortInfo(..., PORT_INFO_VENDOR, ...)`)	MATRIX VISION	Balluff	Applications relying on these strings must be changed!
Device vendor name (e.g. `DevGetInfo(..., DEVICE_INFO_VENDOR, ...)` ) (depending on the Firmware version, not the SDK version)	MATRIX VISION GmbH	Balluff GmbH or MATRIX VISION GmbH (depending on the device family)
mvIMPACT::acquire::Device::manufacturer (depending on the Firmware version, not the SDK version)	MATRIX VISION GmbH

Note

Because of the changes applied to various environment variables (see below) it is not possible to install 2.x and 3.x versions of this SDK side-by-side without some manual work. Because of that a 3.x or higher installation packages will detect the presence of packages smaller than 3.0.0 and if detected will terminate with an error. If this is really needed get in touch and state detailed reasons!
The name and content of the CMake support file mvIMPACT_AcquireConfig.cmake stays the same for compatibility reasons! Changing this would be possible but would force everyone using it to apply slight adjustments to their build environment.
The name and content of the RSS/update related feeds stays the same for compatibility reasons! This would result in older installations no longer being able to detect updates!
Detailed information regarding the changes applied to the API can be found here: Porting Existing Code Written With Versions Smaller Than 3.0.0

Windows

Item	Previously in mvIMPACT Acquire	Currently in Impact Acquire	Comments
Default installation path	%ProgramFiles%/MATRIX VISION/mvIMPACT Acquire	%ProgramFiles%/Balluff/Impact Acquire
Default value of the environment variable `MVIMPACT_ACQUIRE_DIR`	%ProgramFiles%/MATRIX VISION/mvIMPACT Acquire	%ProgramFiles%/Balluff/Impact Acquire
Default value of the environment variable `MVIMPACT_ACQUIRE_DATA_DIR`	%PUBLIC%/Documents/MATRIX VISION/mvIMPACT Acquire	%PUBLIC%/Documents/Balluff/Impact Acquire	Please consider using the environment variable `MVIMPACT_ACQUIRE_DATA_DIR`! Otherwise the path must be adjusted manually.
The location of various Registry Keys containing settings stored by GUI tools using a new name	HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\<NameOfTheTool>	HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\<NameOfTheTool>	When starting the GUI tools with the new name, settings stored with the previous versions of the tools will not be applied.

Linux

Item	Previously in mvIMPACT Acquire	Currently in Impact Acquire	Comments
Default installation path	/opt/mvIMPACT_Acquire/	/opt/Impact_Acquire/
Default value of the environment variable `MVIMPACT_ACQUIRE_DIR`	/opt/mvIMPACT_Acquire/	/opt/Impact_Acquire/
Default value of the environment variable `MVIMPACT_ACQUIRE_DATA_DIR`	/opt/mvIMPACT_Acquire/data	/opt/Impact_Acquire/data
The location of various files containing settings stored by GUI tools using a new name	/home/<user>/<NameOfTheTool>	/home/<user>/<NameOfTheTool>	Previous settings of tools with older names will not be found and therefore an application will start up with its default settings, for instance, a previously disabled QSW will run again.
Pseudo file generated by the BVS CA-BN (mvBlueNAOS) kernel module and used to reboot the camera	/sys/kernel/matrix-vision	/sys/kernel/balluff	The kernel module will not be built and installed depending on the design flavour because this might result in two drivers being installed and responsible for the same hardware. Instead, it will always create /sys/kernel/balluff but the producer checks both locations. It will try the old directory only if it finds nothing in the new one.

Migrating Installers

Migrating Installers To Impact Acquire 2.6.4 Or Higher

Since Impact Acquire 2.6.4 and the migration to version 2.4 of the GenICam runtime libraries the embedded *.exe installers for the GenICam runtime are no longer shipped. When migrating custom installers that shall support device drivers depending on the GenICam runtime to Impact Acquire 2.6.4 or greater the GenICamRuntime.msm or GenICamRuntime.x64.msm must be installed instead of the deprecated GenICam_VC80_Win32_i86_v2_3_0.exe or GenICam_VC80_Win64_x64_v2_3_0.exe files. Using these newer merge modules also comes with the advantage, that whenever a new version of the GenICam runtime gets released, this will automatically end up in these files thus custom installers do no longer need to be updated manually.

Migrating Installers To Impact Acquire 2.8.0 Or Higher

Since Impact Acquire 2.8.0 all Balluff installation packages are built using VisualStudio 2013, and therefore use the Microsoft_VC120_OpenMP OpenMP runtime and Microsoft_VC120_CRT C/C++ runtime. Earlier versions used to be compiled with Visual Studio 2005, meaning that the VC80 counterparts of OpenMP and C/C++ runtime were used.

Migrating Installers To Impact Acquire 2.50.0 Or Higher

Since Impact Acquire 2.50.0 all Balluff installation packages are built using VisualStudio 2019. Therefore custom installers no longer need to contain the merge modules mentioned in the previous section but have to install more recent redistributables now. See Prerequisites for details. Earlier versions used to be compiled with Visual Studio 2013, meaning that the VC120 counterparts of OpenMP and C/C++ runtime were used in the form of merge modules (*.msm files). See previous section for details.

Migration Guide For GenICam Compliant Device Driver And Firmware Combinations

This section affects only the mvGenTL_Acquire packages and firmware for Balluff/MATRIX VISION devices that are operated using this package such as GigE Vision, USB3 Vision or other devices operated through the GenICam GenTL interface.

The following host driver and firmware combinations do NOT work together:

Impact Acquire version	Balluff GenICam device firmware version	Details
1.10.95 - 2.6.3	2.14.0 - 2.27.0	A GenICam Device Supporting The 'ValidValueSet' Node Inside Its XML File Cannot Be Initialised
2.15.0 - 2.16.1	1.4.57 - 1.6.5	A GenICam Device With A Floating Enum Entry Node Inside Its XML File Cannot Be Initialised

Potential issues:

Applications still using the Generic interface layout will NOT work with Impact Acquire 2.6.0 and greater: Porting Applications Written With The Generic interface Layout To Use The GenICam™ Interface Layout
Applications written with devices using a very early(11/2010) release of the firmware (1.1.43 and smaller) might not be compatible with devices running a firmware version of 1.2.0 and greater: Feature naming changes from 1.1.43.0 to 1.2.x.x
When an Impact Acquire setting is created with Impact Acquire 2.9.0 or newer, systems running a smaller version of Impact Acquire might not be able to load this setting, so sometimes updating the development system might require changes(an update) on all the target systems as well: mvIMPACT::acquire::FunctionInterface::loadSetting

Migration Guide For mvBlueFOX Devices And Driver

Windows

Since Impact Acquire 2.26.0 the initial mvBlueFOX kernel driver for 32-bit Windows that was removed in version 1.10.66 can no longer be updated to the mvBlueFOX2.sys driver that was added in version 1.6.10 (2006). When you still have 32-bit systems using this old driver use DeviceConfigure to update the driver BEFORE migrating to Impact Acquire 2.26.0 or newer as described in previous releases of this documentation for the DeviceConfigure tool.

Additional details about changes in the API and how to port existing code can be found here: Porting Existing Code