IRSOL
C++ code implementing socket server for interacting with Baumer camera.
Physical setup

This guide lists the steps one should take to configure a Baumer VCXG.2-51M camera.

In particular, it will show how to:

  • retrieve API documentation, SDK and code examples from the Baumer website
  • physically connect the camera to a Shuttle computer
  • run some sample programs to make sure the camera is connected correctly

API documentation and SDK access

The documentation and SDK access for the Baumer camera is available through the Baumer website. In particular, the following resources are useful:

  • Baumer Camera Explorer: a toolkit that allows to manage and interact with cameras connected to your system through a GUI
  • Baumer GAPI SDK: a low level SDK (available for both C and C++ clients) for interacting with the Baumer camera programmatically.
  • Baumer neoAPI: a high level SDK (available for both C and C++ clients) for interactive with the Baumer camera programmatically.

The irsol project developed within this repository is making use of the Baumer neoAPI as an SDK to interact with the physical camera. Documentation for that SDK is available here.

Physical configuration

The following diagram is a schematic representation of how one needs to connect the Baumer camera to the host PC. This setup includes:

  • the Baumer camera
  • a Gigabit PoE Switch (note, PoE stands for Power over Ethernet, and in our case it is necessary in order to power and connect to the camera via a single physical connection)
  • a Shuttle PC
  • ethernet cables connecting the components together
Physical-setup

Once the different parts are connected together, you should see that the Baumer camera has a single green light (non-blinking) turned on. If you see a blinking led, the connection is incorrect.

IP configuration

A critical part for allowing the Shuttle PC to connect to the Baumer camera, relies in making sure the two components have "compatible" IP addresses. In particular, the following network configuration is necessary (to be configure only once):

  • Shuttle PC network port IP and Subnet configuration
  • Camera IP and Subnet configuration

Shuttle network configuration

Assuming the network interface of the Shuttle PC against which the ethernet cable is connected is eth1 , you can check the IP configuration of that port via:

$> ip a show eth1
3: eth1: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state UP group default qlen 1000
link/ether 80:ee:73:e5:82:6a brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
inet 192.168.1.1/24 brd 192.168.1.255 scope global eth1
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
inet6 fe80::82ee:73ff:fee5:826a/64 scope link
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

In the above example, we understand that the eth1 network port of the Shuttle computer is mapped to the following IP address: 192.168.1.1 with a subnet mask (/24) corresponding to 255.255.255.0.

Camera network configuration

A utility tool named gevipconfig (distributed with both Baumer GAPI SDK and Baumer neoAPI, but also available for convenience in this repository inside the src/external/neoapi/tools folder) facilitates the configuration of the IP and Subnet for the Baumer camera. A valid IP address has to be in the subnet of the network interface card, the device is connected to and has to be unique.

It is possible to manually set and persist a static IP address to the Baumer camera following these steps:

  1. Verify the current camera IP configuration by running the gevipconfig tool:
    $> sudo ./gevipconfig
    Network Interface eth1:
    MAC: 80:EE:73:E5:82:6A
    Link Speed: 1000 MBit/s
    IPv4 Address: 192.168.1.1
    Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
    GEV Camera: Baumer - VCXG.2-51M(SN: 700011810487):
    MAC: 00:06:be:12:27:2d
    IPv4 Address: 192.167.10.12
    Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
    Subnet Check: Wrong subnet!
    This should identify the connected camera, and report the following information:
    • the shuttle network interface configuration:
      • IP address (in the example 192.168.1.1)
      • Subnet mask (in the example 255.255.255.0)
    • the camera serial number (in the example: 700011810487)
    • the camera network configuration:
      • IP address (in the example 192.167.10.12)
      • Subnet Mask (in the example 255.255.0.0)
    • A verification result for the subnet-compatibility between the Shuttle and the Camera.

  2. Set the IP address and the Subnet of the Baumer camera to be compatible with the IP address and the Subnet of the Shuttle PC. This can be done via the following command:

    $> sudo ./gevipconfig -c <camera-serial-number> -i <desired-ip-address> -s <desired-subnet> -p

    Note: the combination of IP and subnet configurations must be a valid combination. The following are examples of correct/incorrect combinations:

    • invalid: different subnet

      NIC: IP 192.168.1.1 Subnet 255.255.255.0 Camera: IP 192.168.2.1 Subnet 255.255.255.0

    • invalid: same subnet but also same IP address: NIC: IP 192.168.1.1 Subnet 255.255.255.0 Camera: IP 192.168.1.1 Subnet 255.255.255.0

    • valid: same subnet and different IP address:

      NIC: IP 192.168.1.1 Subnet 255.255.255.0 Camera: IP 192.168.1.2 Subnet 255.255.255.0

    To follow the valid example above, one could run the following command:

    $> sudo ./gevipconfig -c 700011810487 -i 192.168.1.2 -s 255.255.255.0 -p

    More details are available in the gevipconfig documentation The gevipconfig-tool.

Verification

Once the camera and its network configuration has been completed, you can verify the correctness of the setup by running any of the available examples that you can build following the Development Environment Configuration instructions.