Balluff - BVS CA-GT Technical Documentation
Driver concept

Table of Contents

The driver supplied with the Balluff/MATRIX VISION product represents the port between the programmer and the hardware. The driver concept of Balluff provides a standardized programming interface to all image processing products made by Balluff GmbH.
The advantage of this concept for the programmer is that a developed application runs without the need for any major modifications to the various image processing products made by Balluff GmbH. You can also incorporate new driver versions, which are available for download free of charge on our website:
https://www.balluff.com.
The following diagram shows a schematic structure of the driver concept:

Driver concept
  • 1 Part of any Impact Acquire installation package (Windows).
  • 2 Separately available for 32 bit and 64 bit. Requires at least one installed driver package.
  • 3 See 2, but requires an installed version of the mvBlueFOX driver.
  • 4 Part of the NeuroCheck installer but requires at least one installed frame grabber driver.
  • 5 Part of the mvIMPACT SDK installation. However, new designs should use the .NET libs that are now part of Impact Acquire (mv.impact.acquire.dll). The namespace mv.impact.acquire of mv.impact.acquire.dll provides a more natural and more efficient access to the same features as contained in the deprecated namespace mvIMPACT_NET.acquire of mvIMPACT_NET.dll, which is why the latter one should only be used for backward compatibility but NOT when developing a new application.
  • 6 Part of Micro-Manager.

VisionPro Support

Every Impact Acquire driver package on Windows comes with an adapter to VisionPro from Cognex. The installation order does not matter. After the driver package and VisionPro has been installed, the next time VisionPro is started it will allow selecting the Impact Acquire device. No additional steps are needed.

Balluff/MATRIX VISION devices that also comply with the GigE Vision™ or USB3 Vision™ standard don't need any software at all, but can also use VisionPro's built-in GigE Vision™ or USB3 Vision™ support.

HALCON Support

HALCON comes with built-in support for Impact Acquire compliant devices, so once a device driver has been installed for the Impact Acquire device, it can also be operated from a HALCON environment using the corresponding acquisition interface. No additional steps are needed.

Balluff/MATRIX VISION devices that also comply with the GigE Vision™ standard don't need any software at all, but can also use HALCON's built-in GigE Vision™ support.

As some Impact Acquire device driver packages also come with a GenTL compliant interface, these can also be operated through HALCON's built-in GenTL acquisition interface.

LabVIEW Support

Every Impact Acquire compliant device can be operated under LabVIEW through an additional set of VIs which is shipped by Balluff as a separate installation (mvLabVIEW Acquire).

Balluff/MATRIX VISION devices that also comply with the GigE Vision™ or USB3 Vision™ standard don't need any additional software at all, but can also be operated through LabVIEW's GigE Vision™ or USB3 Vision™ driver packages.

DirectShow Support

Every Impact Acquire compliant device driver package comes with an interface to DirectShow. In order to be usable from a DirectShow compliant application, devices must first be registered for DirectShow support. How to this is explained here.

Micro-Manager Support

Every Impact Acquire compliant device can be operated under https://micro-manager.org when using Impact Acquire and at least Micro-Manager 1.4.23 build AFTER 15.12.2016. The adapter needed is part of the Micro-Manager release. Additional information can be found here: https://micro-manager.org/wiki/MatrixVision.