[ros-users] Prosilica GC1020

[René Wagner]

Hi Blaise,

On Mon, 2010-10-11 at 09:37 -0700, Blaise Gassend wrote:
> > As for using the driver with the GC1020, I had to uncomment all calls to
> > cam_->setWhiteBalance(...) in prosilica_node.cpp to prevent the node
> > from getting stuck at this warning:
> >
> > Could it be that some Prosilica models don't support automatic white
> > balancing? Could the driver handle this case more gracefully?
> 
> Making the setWhiteBalance call should be ticketed here:
> https://code.ros.org/trac/ros-pkg

The above should have read "had to comment out", so it's about not
making the call, but I'll file a ticket anyway.

> I think that you should be able to determine whether your camera has
> automatic white balance by playing around with SampleViewer in the
> prosilica_gige_sdk package. Are there attributes related to AWB, for
> example?

I'll check that later today.

> > The driver also complains about not being able to read the intrinsics
> > from the camera. This is just a warning and I suspect its origin is the
> > fact that no intrinsic parameters have been written to the user memory
> > area yet.
> 
> Correct. This is normal until you calibrate the camera.

Thanks for confirming this.

> 
> > Another issue was caused by the default packet filter ("firewall")
> > configuration in Fedora which leads to the subtle failure mode where
> > communication on the control port works but no images get through. I
> > eventually figured this out but a warning in the wiki documentation
> > might be useful.
> 
> Since you are the only person who knows the specifics of this problem,
> it would be really useful if you put a few lines about the symptoms
> and how you solved the problem on the troubleshooting page:
> 
> http://www.ros.org/wiki/prosilica_camera/Troubleshooting

Good plan. I'll document the issue there and add a few links to the
Troubleshooting page (which I haven't been aware of until now).

> > Next on my list is getting two GC1020s to work in a stereo setup. I
> > don't know when I'll get around to that yet, though.
> 
> Here I believe that your main problem will be getting the timestamps
> from the two cameras to exactly match. I have heard that there is a
> node to do this, but am not sure off-hand what it is called. It is on
> a non-WG repo.

I vaguely remember this being mentioned on the mailing list now. I'll
check the archives later today.

Cheers,

Rene

-- 
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Dipl.-Inf. René Wagner                     Junior Researcher
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