Impact Acquire SDK .NET
A Balluff device Such As A BVS CA-G* (mvBlueCOUGAR-X) Or BVS CA-SF (mvBlueFOX3) Is Detected As A 3rd Party GigE Vision™/USB3 Vision™ Device Only

Symptoms

ImpactControlCenter - Incorrectly detected device
  • When using a Balluff/MATRIX VISION GigE Vision™ device this device reports it's family as GigEVisionDevice instead of e.g. mvBlueCOUGAR.
  • When using a Balluff/MATRIX VISION USB3 Vision™ device this device reports it's family as USB3VisionDevice instead of e.g. mvBlueFOX3.
  • Certain properties e.g. like the ExposureTime or the BalanceRatio seem to miss in the feature tree displayed in ImpactControlCenter
  • The DeviceSpecific interface layout ('GenICam' vs. 'DeviceSpecific' Interface Layout) is not available
  • The FirmwareVersion property contains Unknown
  • The getUserData related API accessible through the Device object is not available
  • Using the FirmwareUpdater API is not possible
  • For such devices DeviceConfigure does not allow to
    • apply firmware updates
    • verify firmware updates
    • apply a user defined identifier

Cause

The reason for this behaviour is an inconsistency in older versions of the mvGenTLConsumer-lib, that fails to detect devices with certain MAC addresses correctly.

The following table shows general compatibility issues for GigE Vision™ devices:

Impact Acquire versionPotential detection issues
< 2.31.0 (Mar 07 2019)Only devices using a MAC address from the following ranges are detected correctly:
0c:8d:50:80:00 - 0c:8d:61:7F:FF
0c:8d:63:00:00 - 0c:8d:63:7F:FF
0c:8d:70:80:00 - 0c:8d:70:BF:FF
2.31.0 - 2.47.0 (Jul 28 2022)Only when using customized devices using non Balluff MAC addresses AND custom product identifiers
> 2.47.0 No

The following table shows general compatibility issues for USB3 Vision™ devices:

Impact Acquire versionPotential detection issues
<= 2.47.0 (Jul 28 2022)Only when using customized devices using non Balluff vendor names
> 2.47.0 No

Resolution

Use a compatible combination of device and Impact Acquire.