UEye Cam Driver

This software comes with a BSD License and provides convenience APIs (c++ and ROS) that facilitate access to UEye Cameras via the IDS Software Suite.

Requirements

Buildtime

If you are just building the software, no IDS Software Suite installation is required. This package will fetch headers and libraries on-the-fly to result in a successful build. Note however, that these are not made available for a runtime environment. These headers and libraries are not installed to the install space and you'll also need to install the IDS discovery daemon.

Runtime

• IDS uEye Software Suite >= 4.94

The IDS Software Suite installs headers, libraries, documentation and a daemon used for discovery of UEye cameras.

Start the discovery daemon for ethernet connected cameras:

$ sudo systemctl start ueyeethdrc
$ sudo /etc/init.d/ueyeethdrc start

To configure the cameras, do it via the idscameramanager graphical tool (should be reasonably self-explanatory) or via the command line tools:

• Enumerate the network interfaces to be used for discovery (/etc/ids/ueye/ueyeethd.conf)
• Configure the camera ip addresses (ueyesetip)
• Configure the camera ids (ueyesetid)

Usage

Resources

Default resource paths include:

• ~/.ros/camera_info/: camera calibration files (.yaml)
• ~/.ros/camera_conf/: IDS configuration files (.ini)

The camera calibration files are used to feed the ros2 camera_calibration framework.

The IDS configuration files are the native format for configuring an IDS camera. In general, you do not need an IDS configuration file as the ROS wrapper exposes most of the configuration via dynamic ROS parameters, but an IDS configuration file can be useful for parameters that it does not yet cover.

Quick Start

To get started, launch the standalone or component launcher. It is configured with a parameterisation that should enable connection to most IDS cameras.

# Install launcher / debugging / viz tools if you don't already have them
$ sudo apt install ros-foxy-ros2launch ros-foxy-ros2param ros-foxy-ros2run ros-foxy-ros2topic ros-foxy-rqt-image-view

# Uses ueye_cam/config/standalone.yaml
$ ros2 launch ueye_cam standalone.launch.py

# In a seperate shell, visualise the stream
$ ros2 run rqt_image_view rqt_image_view /ueye_cam/froody/image_raw

# Play around with parameters
$ ros2 param list
$ ros2 param set ueye_cam auto_gain false
$ ros2 param describe ueye_cam red_gain
$ ros2 param set ueye_cam red_gain 100

Configuration

In a typical launch, configuration can be traced to one or more sources, each with their own priority. Lower priorities can be overridden by higher priorities. From lowest, to highest:

• Defaults : refer to ueye_cam/node_parameters.hpp and ueye_cam/camera_parameters.hpp
• IDS : defined in node_parameters.ids_configuration_filename
  • If none is set, the default ~/.ros/camera_conf/<camera_name>.ini is used
• On-Launch : usually passed in via .yaml to the launcher / command line
• Dynamic : modified on the fly at runtime

Camera Calibration

TODO

IDS Camera Configuration Files (Optional)

Using the ros2 node, along with ros2 parameters will serve most use cases. Making use of IDS camera configuration files however (e.g. config/example_ids_configuration.ini) is useful in some situations:

• If you want access to all parameters of the camera. This node only exposes the most common parameters for configuration as ROS2 parameters.
• If you want to absolutely ensure your cameras have a fully deterministic launch, these initialisation files are complete. On loading, they will overwrite any and all residual configuration left by the last user. The ROS2 configuration will also be as deterministic as possible, i.e. it will overwrite any and all residual configuration it knows about, but it will not be able to do so for parameters it is not aware of that may have been reconfigured via other means.

TODO - how to use the IDS gui, how to export and load the configuration files.

Changelog for package ueye_cam

2.0.0 (2021-06-25)

• ros2 port for Foxy
• export IDS configuration files
• Contributors: jmackay2, stonier

1.0.19 (2021-01-13)

• updated MD5 hash for re-packaged unofficiall IDS drivers archives
• Contributors: Anqi Xu

1.0.18 (2021-01-09)

• updated driver URLs for 4.94 version
• [uEye 4.94] Update Deprecated Event Handling Functions ([#97 <https://github.com/anqixu/ueye\_cam/issues/97\>]{.title-ref})
  • Updated event functions to 4.94 API + Added init of event before enabling it
  • Added uEye 4.94 req
  • Changed timeout to UINT to fit 4_94 API
• Adding call of exit routine for the frame event
• Adding auto exposure reference value
• Added support for setting the software-gamma
• Package format update and code cleanup
• Contributors: Anqi Xu, Brett Newman, Nullket, jmackay2, nullket

1.0.17 (2020-08-26)

• Merge pull request [#83 <https://github.com/anqixu/ueye\_cam/issues/83\>]{.title-ref} from anqixu/use_ros_time Do not get timestamp from camera, and use ros::Time::now() instead
• Merge pull request [#61 <https://github.com/anqixu/ueye\_cam/issues/61\>]{.title-ref} from jackokaiser/master Adapted roslaunch for passing camera name as argument
• Changes from https://github.com/anqixu/ueye_cam/issues/82
• Do not link the ueye api to the check api node to avoid conflicts
• Default dynamic_reconfigure parameters now don\'t overwrite ini file params. Fixes [#74 <https://github.com/anqixu/ueye\_cam/issues/74\>]{.title-ref}
• image dimensions now account for cam_subsampling_rate
• Merge pull request [#65 <https://github.com/anqixu/ueye\_cam/issues/65\>]{.title-ref} from flynneva/dev
• removed / from frame_ID so that data can be used with new ros tf2 standard
• Removed trailing whitespaces
• Readded camera_conf for backward compatibility
• changed setFlashParams failure into warning
• Adapted roslaunch for passing camera name as argument
• nodelet no longer dies upon setFlashParams fail (since some cameras don\'t support it)
• Merge pull request [#54 <https://github.com/anqixu/ueye\_cam/issues/54\>]{.title-ref} from 534o/master
• forget to add check_ueye_api to install list
• Contributors: Anqi Xu, Anup Parikh, Evan Flynn, Jacques KAISER, Tokyo Opensource Robotics Developer 534, loooph

1.0.16 (2017-01-02)

• fixed crash on camera reconnect
• Contributors: Anqi Xu, Christopher Wecht

1.0.15 (2016-08-25)

• recover + update from failure in setColorMode
• extended color modes (10, 12, 16 bit per channel)
• added timeout topic for better debugging of frame timeouts
• Contributors: Anqi Xu, Dominik Klein

1.0.14 (2016-05-26)

• now attempting to link against 32-bit ARMHF IDS libs on ARM64 arch
• added capability to detect ARM64 processor (aarch64)
• added separate rates for polling frames vs publishing images
• fixed buffersize for subsampling and increased maximum image size availible via rqt
• added Travis CI config
• Contributors: Anqi Xu, Eddy, Isaac I.Y. Saito, francois

1.0.13 (2016-05-13)

• Change timestamp source based on issue https://github.com/anqixu/ueye_cam/issues/37
• changed \'failure to set active-low flash\' from error to warning
• Fixed typo in Gain for dynamic reconfigure parameters
• Updated pixel_clock cap in dyncfg settings
• Added check_ueye_api to confirm availability of IDS SDK at runtime
• Contributors: Anqi Xu, Anup, Aris Synodinos, Kei Okada

1.0.12 (2015-09-28)

• fixed binning IS_INVALID_BUFFER_SIZE bug
• Modified nodelet to use camera timestamp instead of wall clock time
• Fix for new upstream dir name on ARM
• Contributors: Alejandro Merello, Anqi Xu, Scott K Logan

1.0.11 (2015-08-17)

• updated barebones IDS drivers to 4.61
• removed barebones IDS drivers from debian packaging
• Added proper checking for C++11 features on compilers
• Performed minor code cleanup, updated old PLUGINLIB_DECLARE_CLASS to newer PLUGINLIB_EXPORT_CLASS
• Contributors: Anqi Xu, Aris Synodinos

1.0.10 (2015-08-06)

• fixed setting synchronization bugs during camera initialization
• added support for (packed) BGR8 color mode
• failing to set non-essential parameters will no longer prematurily terminate nodelet
• updated printouts to be more verbose and consistent
• fix for reported ARM arch on Fedora
• Contributors: Anqi Xu, Scott K Logan

1.0.9 (2015-02-03)

• fixed lagged changes to flip_upd and flip_lr via rqt_reconfigure
• Support discrete-only pixelclocks cameras
• Ask if gainboost is supported first
• Switched to jbohren\'s version of the file(GENERATE...) fix
• Contributors: Anqi Xu, Fran Real, Jonathan Bohren

1.0.8 (2015-01-08)

• switched from cmake\'s file(GENERATE ...) to execute_command(cp ...), to accommodate cmake 2.8.x on Saucy
• Contributors: Anqi Xu

1.0.7 (2014-12-22)

• continuing to address issues on ROS bin buildfarm
• Contributors: Anqi Xu

1.0.6 (2014-12-18)

• continuing to trying to fix errors on ROS buildfarm
• Contributors: Anqi Xu

1.0.5 (2014-12-11)

• fixed/improved unofficial driver install; added warning messages during compile- & run-time to note that unofficially-installed drivers will allow ueye_cam to be compiled, but will not detect any cameras during runtime (since IDS camera daemon is not packaged in unofficial driver download)
• Contributors: Anqi Xu

1.0.4 (2014-12-01)

• Switching to DownloadUEyeDriversUnofficial.cmake (based on ueye ROS package) until IDS grants official permission
• Contributors: Anqi Xu

1.0.3 (2014-11-05)

• Dependency switch from \'vision_opencv\' meta-package to \'cv_bridge\' package
• trim \'/\' prefix of topic and service to change to relative name-space
• Contributors: Anqi Xu, Yutaka Kondo

1.0.2 (2014-10-16)

• switched from rosdep \'opencv2\' to \'vision_opencv\'
• Contributors: Anqi Xu

1.0.1 (2014-10-16)

• Package now attempts to auto-install IDS uEye drivers; prints more useful info for IS_TIMED_OUT errors
• First attempt at debian-packaging
• Contributors: Anqi Xu, Dirk Thomas, Juan Camilo Gamboa Higuera, Kei Okada, Yutaka Kondo