Table of Contents
Wizards in ImpactControlCenter are meant to provide a convenient way to make use of certain sets of features that would otherwise need cumbersome setting up via The Property Grid.
A wizard can be accessed in 3 ways:
- By pressing the Wizard button on the left toolbar of the application. This button will be enabled whenever a property is selected in The Property Grid for which a wizard exists and when all other features needed by this wizard are supported by the device/driver combination as well. So e.g. when selecting any LUT feature in The Property Grid the Wizard button should become available. So pressing it afterwards would open the LUT Control Wizard.
- By right-clicking on a feature and selecting "Open Wizard" from the context menu
- By selecting it from the Wizards menu. Here all wizards available by the open device currently selected will be enabled. Disabled menu entries are either not available for this device or the device needs to be opened first.
AOI Wizard
The AOI wizard allows the set up all sorts of AOIs in a fairly easy way. Supported AOIs can either be configured as described within the image analysis chapter (Analysis AOIs) or by using the controls offed by the dialog. To select a certain AOI when starting the wizard first the device will be configured to full AOI mode again. Pressing "Ok" will then close the dialog and will apply all AOI settings to the device, pressing "Cancel" will revert all changes made with this dialog.
Color Correction Wizard
The color correction wizard is mainly meant to allow the usage of the sensor specific color correction matrix (CCM) which is a standard feature for every Balluff GenICam™ device and adjust the color correction to the used output display thus the monitor which might use a certain color space. Both CCMs (camera and monitor) can then be combined with a third one that will add/remove saturation from the resulting image. When satisfying settings have been found some devices will allow to write these settings back into the device. If that is possible then all the needed calculation will be done in the device itself thus resulting in satisfying images that do not cause any additional CPU load on the host system.
- Note
- If the calculation cannot be done by the device then enabling this feature will result in additional CPU load on the host system!
File Access Wizards
Both the file up- and download wizard provide an easy way to exchange files with a device. If supported by the device this can be used e.g. to download a flat field correction image or an application specific file (e.g. calibration data) that then later is used by another application. These wizards wrap the GenICam™ File Access Control features.
- See also
- GenICam™ Standard Features Naming Convention (SFNC)(https://www.emva.org/standards-technology/genicam/)
- API manuals (https://www.balluff.com/en-de/online-manuals-mv)
Lens Control Wizard
- Note
- This wizard addresses Balluff specific features only thus will only be available for certain GenICam™ compliant Balluff devices! Whether or not a device supports all the features required by this wizard determines if it will be available or not. Please refer to the product manual of your device. If supported a use-case describing electrical characteristics as well as various other information that is needed to work with this wizard can be found there.
If the feature is available it allows to control a motorized lens connected to the Balluff device. Things like focus or zoom might be configurable then depending on the used lens.
- See also
- product manuals (https://www.balluff.com/en-de/online-manuals-mv)
LUT Control Wizard
The LUT wizard addresses the GenICam™ LUT Control feature category and aims to provide an easy way to set up LUTs on a device. A detailed description of the GenICam™ related features used by the wizard can either be found in the product specific manual, the Impact Acquire API documentation or the GenICam™ SFNC (Standard Features Naming Convention).
When this wizard is started the first time for a given device it will download all LUTs from the device into the host systems RAM. Depending on the speed the device is capable of delivering the requested data this might take some time. During the download or later when uploading a LUT back into the device a progress dialog will inform about the estimated time remaining. Afterwards the following dialog will be displayed:
Depending on the feature set supported by the device certain features might be disabled or simply will not be displayed at all. In the upper left corner the LUT to configure can be selected, on the left hand side various controls will allow to modify the currently selected LUT and the upper right buttons can be used to up- and download the LUTs to/from the device. With the Import and Export buttons it is possible to exchange LUT data with the hard disk in CSV-format.
For example if a device supports several LUTs (e.g. one for every color channel) then to copy one LUT into another press the Copy button:
It is also possible to manually enter each LUT entry by selecting the Numerical tab on the wizard, but this can take quite some time. It would probably be easier to use Excel or something similar and then export the data in CSV-format and import it back into the wizard again.
All modifications done to LUTs happen in the host systems cache. To make them effective they must be sent back to the device. This can be done using the Synchronize dialog:
- See also
- GenICam™ Standard Features Naming Convention (SFNC)(https://www.emva.org/standards-technology/genicam/)
- API and product manuals (https://www.balluff.com/en-de/online-manuals-mv)
Multi-AOI Wizard
This wizard will allow to set up a device for transferring multiple AOIs from one larger image combined into a single, then smaller frame.
- Since
- Version 2.19.0 of this application
- Note
- This wizard addresses Balluff specific features only thus will only be available for certain GenICam™ compliant Balluff devices! Whether or not a device supports all the features required by this wizard determines if it will be available or not. Whether or not a device supports the "mvMultiAreaMode" and other features required is described in the corresponding product manual.
If the currently selected device supports all the required features, the wizard can be selected from the "Wizards" menu or by selecting a feature required by the wizard within the The Property Grid and then pressing the Wizard button in the left toolbar or as described in the very beginning of the Wizards chapter:
Once started the wizard will display one page for each AOI currently configured:
Either the controls on each page can be used to modify each AOI or the green AOIs can be configure like the Analysis AOIs used for the image analysis plots
The live image in the background shows the created AOIs in green and all the AOIs that must be transmitted as well in red. The red AOIs are needed as a result of how the sensors implement this feature. More information about this can be found in the product manual. The resulting image however always contains ALL areas in either red or green boxes. All the other areas will not be read out of the sensor thus can result in a dramatic reduction in both used bandwidth and sensor read-out time.
- See also
- product manuals (https://www.balluff.com/en-de/online-manuals-mv)
Multi-Core Acquisition Wizard
- Since
- Version 2.44.0 of this application
This wizard can be used to configure the Multi-Core Acquisition Optimizer feature of Impact Acquire.
- Note
- This feature is currently implemented for the mvBlueCOUGAR-X, mvBlueCOUGAR-XD and BVS CA-GT (mvBlueCOUGAR-XT) devices! To find out more about the underlying technology and required firmware versions please refer to the corresponding chapters in the product manuals describing the network setup and optimization.
This feature will allow to precisely select one or multiple physical CPU cores that shall be used to process the image data coming from the device. This can be extremely helpful when facing one of the following scenarios:
- The CPU core used for receiving the network data shall be used exclusively for this task and all the application related additional work like image processing shall be done using the remaining cores only
- Multiple cameras shall be used and each camera shall have its own dedicated CPU core for exclusive usage. This can be used to avoid situations where the system assigns the work of multiple streams to the same CPU core leading to data loss due to core overload
- A single core in the host system is not powerful enough to process the incoming network stream resulting in data loss. Then this wizard as well as the Impact Acquire API can be used to distribute the load to several cores
- The application itself performs a lot or parallel processing thus uses each CPU core in the system. The one that must do the image data processing therefore gets more work in total thus degrading overall system performance
- Note
- The Multi-Core Acquisition Optimizer feature uses the RSS (Receive Side Scaling) feature of modern network cards in combination with a special implementation in the GigE Vision™ filter driver AND the device firmware. In order to use it the camera must support certain features only available in mvBlueCOUGAR-X, mvBlueCOUGAR-XD and BVS CA-GT (mvBlueCOUGAR-XT) devices and an RSS capable network card that is configured accordingly is required. More details can be found in the product manual.
The wizard itself is rather simple:
- "Base Core": This is a read-only feature! It reflects the RSS base processor number as configured by the user (if supported by the NIC driver) or as selected by the NIC driver (if either NOT selected by the user OR if manual selection is not supported by the NIC driver). CPU cores smaller than this value cannot be used for processing network data from devices connected to this NIC. More details about RSS and this parameter in particular can be found in various places on the Internet.
- "First Core Index": This parameter allows the selection of the first CPU core that shall be used for processing network data from this device relative to the "Base Core". E.g. if the base core has been set to 3 then setting the first core index to 2 will result in CPU core 5 (3 + 2) being the first core to use for data processing.
- "Core Count": This parameter defines how many CPU cores starting at "First Core Index" shall be used for processing image network data coming from this specific device. Using more cores reduces the overall load for each individual core but also results in a slight overhead caused by core switches that must be handled by the system
- "Core Switch Interval": This parameter defines after how many network packets another CPU core shall be used. This value is only important when using more than 1 CPU core for processing network data! Selecting a value that is too high can result in data loss as an individual core might not be able to get rid of its received data in time and selecting a value too low introduces too much overhead for core switches.
For the full set of details please refer to the product manual mentioned above! As a general rule of thumb the following guidelines can be used:
- If a single CPU core can cope with all the data the best performance can be achieved by using a dedicated CPU core for processing the network data and by removing all other application specific CPU load from this core. So explicit selection of 1 core is done using the Multi-Core Acquisition Optimizer feature (without it the CPU core used by the system will be different for each session) and the application itself uses appropriate mechanisms to move the remaining load to the other cores (e.g. by setting the process affinity mask)
- If the application cannot explicitly move its work to certain cores or when a single core is not powerful enough use 2-8 cores in parallel for network data processing and select a higher "Core Switch Interval" when using less CPU cores
When the wizard is configured its effect can e.g. be observed using the Windows task manager:
Quick Setup Wizard
- Since
- Version 2.11.3 of this application
The Quick Setup Wizard is a tiny and powerful single window configuration tool to optimize the image quality automatically and to set the most important parameters which affect the image quality, in an easy way and to get an immediate preview of these changes. If the wizard does not start automatically anymore because during a previous session this option has been enabled the wizard needs to be started manually:
Afterwards the following dialog will be displayed:
Settings will be accepted by clicking "Ok", otherwise the changes are discarded and the previous ones will be restored when leaving the dialog.
Depending on the sensor (gray-scale or color/Bayer), the wizard will automatically pre-select settings resulting in an optimal image quality.
"For all cameras:"
The pixel format is chosen as 10 bit (if possible) as a good compromise on image quality and speed.
It will further set
- "Exposure" to Auto,
- "Gain" to Auto,
- "Frame rate" to Auto based on current settings of the camera, and
- switches camera into continuous mode
"In case of gray:"
The above settings will be also applied whenever the "Gray Preset" button is pressed. For gray cameras it is assumed that image processing prefers a linear camera response.
"In case of color:"
- "Auto White Balance" in the device will be switched on
- a moderate, host based "Gamma correction" (1.8) will be applied
- a sensor specific "Color Correction Matrix" and the respective "sRGB display matrix" will be applied (if possible this will be done in the device to reduce the CPU load on the host.
These settings will also be applied whenever the "Color Preset" button is pressed. Assuming that for a color camera image this results in the best human visual feedback.
Changing Presets
The following presets are available:
- Gray
- Color (Host) will perform most of the expensive optimizations by utilizing the host systems CPU
- Color (Camera) will perform most of the expensive optimizations by utilizing the device, might not always be available depending on the device's capabilities
- Factory
"Factory" can be used as a fall back to quickly skip or remove all presets and load the factory default settings.
Modifying Settings
All auto modes can be switched off and all settings, such as Gain, Exposure etc. can then be adjusted manually by using:
- the sliders
- the spin buttons
- entering values into the text controls
Toggling the "Gamma" button loads or unloads a host based 10-bit Gamma correction with a moderate value of 1.8 into the signal processing path. Switch "Gamma" to make a gray-scale image appear natural for the human eye.
Toggling "Color+" button switches on/off both CCM and sRGB display matrix. This optimizes a color sensor's response for the human eye and goes in conjunction with a display color response. Because sRGB displays are mostly used and this is the default color space in Windows OS, these are preselected. If another display matrix (e.g. Adobe or WideGamut) is required this can be selected by changing the ColorTwistOutputCorrection property in The Property Grid accordingly. To locate the feature the Find A Feature option could be used.
Setting The Black Level
The black level can be used if dark portions in the image are required to appear even darker or brighter.
- Note
- The slider combines analog and digital settings in a way that once the analog value range is fully use the digital range will be used addition. Analog is preferred whenever possible!
Setting The Gain
Allows to set the gain value manually.
- Note
- The slider combines analog and digital settings in a way that once the analog value range is fully use the digital range will be used addition. Analog is preferred whenever possible!
Setting The Saturation
Can be used to increase/decrease the color saturation to make the image appear more/less colorful. It does not change uncolored parts in the image nor changes the color tone or hue.
Disabling The Quick Setup Wizard
Uncheck the checkbox "Show Quick Setup On Device Open" to disable the Quick Setup Wizard to be called automatically:
Use the "Wizards" menu and select "Quick Setup" to open the Quick Setup Wizard again.
Applying/Discarding Changes
Use "OK" to use the values and settings of the Quick Setup Wizard and go back to the tree mode of ImpactControlCenter.
Use "Cancel" to discard the Quick Setup Wizard values and settings and go back to ImpactControlCenter and use the former (or default) settings.
Image Display Functions
The Quick Setup Wizard still allows zooming into the image by right-clicking on the image display and unchecking "Fit To Screen" mode. Use the mouse wheel to zoom in or out. Check "Fit To Screen" mode, if you want the complete camera image to be sized in the window screen size.
- See also
Known Restrictions
In cases of Tungsten (artificial) light, camera brightness may tend to oscillate if Auto functions are used. This can be minimized or avoided by setting the frame frequency to an integer divisor of the main frequency.
- Example:
- Europe: 50 Hz; Set frame rate to 100, 50, 25 12.5 fps or appropriate.
- In countries with 60 Hz use 120, 60, 30 or 15 accordingly.
Sequencer Control Wizard
The sequencer wizard addresses the GenICam™ Sequencer Control feature category and aims to provide an easy way to set up a sequencer on a device. A detailed description of the GenICam™ related features used by the wizard can either be found in the product specific manual which provides a use-case explaining the general concept of the sequencer as well as various background information needed in order to make good use of this feature and the wizard, the Impact Acquire API documentation or the GenICam™ SFNC (Standard Features Naming Convention).
Having a good basic understanding about the GenICam™ SFNC Sequencer Control concepts is required to efficiently work with a sequencer on a device as it on of the most complex features offered by a device.
In the upper left region of the dialog the features to be used by the sequencer can be configured. Only the once required should be enabled here in order to reduce complexity to a minimum. Switching off all features not needed might also result in faster switching time on the device when jumping from one set to another at runtime!
The wizard allows to add/remove sequencer sets and also to define a starting set for the sequencer operation by some buttons. The right side of the dialog can be used to configure each set individually as required. In the lower right section each set can - depending on certain conditions - be connected with another set. When loops or open ends are detected warnings will be displayed automatically in this area and also the sets might get a different background color then.
- Note
- Only GenICam™ devices supporting the Sequencer Control category will support this wizard.
- See also
- GenICam™ Standard Features Naming Convention (SFNC)(https://www.emva.org/standards-technology/genicam/)
- API manuals and (most important) the corresponding use-case in the product manual (https://www.balluff.com/en-de/online-manuals-mv)
