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Using the Camera Emulator

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Thies Möller edited this page Nov 15, 2022 · 1 revision

Beside the interfaces to real cameras, pylonsrc can access an emulated camera. This allows to develop with pylonsrc without a real camera. The emulator is documented in the Basler Product Documentation

Enabling the emulator

In the pylonsrc plugin, the emulator is normally disabled. This allows to open a single real camera without always selecting between the emulator and the real.

To enable the emulator, set the environment variable PYLON_CAMEMU to the number of emulated cameras required.

As an example:

export PYLON_CAMEMU=8

This gst-launch-1.0 call will activate eight emulated cameras and arrange them on a 2x4 grid.

#!/bin/bash

export PYLON_CAMEMU=8

gst-launch-1.0 -e compositor name=comp \
sink_0::alpha=1 sink_0::xpos=0 sink_0::ypos=0 \
sink_1::alpha=1 sink_1::xpos=640 sink_1::ypos=0 \
sink_2::alpha=1 sink_2::xpos=1280 sink_2::ypos=0 \
sink_3::alpha=1 sink_3::xpos=1920 sink_3::ypos=0 \
sink_4::alpha=1 sink_4::xpos=0 sink_4::ypos=360 \
sink_5::alpha=1 sink_5::xpos=640 sink_5::ypos=360 \
sink_6::alpha=1 sink_6::xpos=1280 sink_6::ypos=360 \
sink_7::alpha=1 sink_7::xpos=1920 sink_7::ypos=360 \
! autovideosink \
pylonsrc device-serial-number=0815-0000 ! video/x-raw,format=RGB,width=640,height=360,fps=25 ! videoconvert ! comp.sink_0 \
pylonsrc device-serial-number=0815-0001 ! video/x-raw,format=RGB,width=640,height=360,fps=25 ! videoconvert ! comp.sink_1 \
pylonsrc device-serial-number=0815-0002 ! video/x-raw,format=RGB,width=640,height=360,fps=25 ! videoconvert ! comp.sink_2 \
pylonsrc device-serial-number=0815-0003 ! video/x-raw,format=RGB,width=640,height=360,fps=25 ! videoconvert ! comp.sink_3 \
pylonsrc device-serial-number=0815-0004 ! video/x-raw,format=RGB,width=640,height=360,fps=25 ! videoconvert ! comp.sink_4 \
pylonsrc device-serial-number=0815-0005 ! video/x-raw,format=RGB,width=640,height=360,fps=25 ! videoconvert ! comp.sink_5 \
pylonsrc device-serial-number=0815-0006 ! video/x-raw,format=RGB,width=640,height=360,fps=25 ! videoconvert ! comp.sink_6 \
pylonsrc device-serial-number=0815-0007 ! video/x-raw,format=RGB,width=640,height=360,fps=25 ! videoconvert ! comp.sink_7

!

Displaying custom test images

The camera emulator can use customer supplied images instead of the standard moving gray gradient. Details also in the section about displaying custom test images in the Basler Product Documentation

A single image, or a folder with images, can be used. Formats are:

Windows: BMP, JPG, PNG, and TIF.

Linux: PNG and TIF

The output size of the pylonsrc has to be set to the size of the images.

Example:

check size of images:

file test_images/image0001.png  
test_images/image0001.png: PNG image data, 640 x 360, 8-bit/color RGB, non-interlaced

The relevant camera features are:

  • ImageFileMode
  • ImageFilename
  • TestImageSelector

Example pipeline with multiple 640x360 images in a folder test_images in the current working directory

PYLON_CAMEMU=1 gst-launch-1.0 pylonsrc \
			   device-index=1 \
			   cam::ImageFileMode=On \
			   cam::ImageFilename=$PWD/test_images \
			   cam::TestImageSelector=Off \
			   ! video/x-raw,format=RGB,width=640,height=360 \
			   ! videoconvert ! autovideosink

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