Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

"Pearson, MR \(Matthew\)" <[email protected]> · Mon, 11 Jun 2007 09:06:00 +0100

Hi,

We've tried out a GigE Pulnix TMC-1405GE here at Diamond. But we don't
yet use these cameras on beamlines or in the machine. We found that this
particular camera wasn't sensitive enough for some applications (like
using a microscope lens) and did put a lot of load on to the gigabit
ethernet network (3MB images at 30Hz). To use something like this in
production will probably require us to partition the ethernet and make a
separate 'GigE camera subnet', and provide a server gateway to handle
the video, do the compression, etc. Although if you have a camera that
can operate at low frame rate this isn't such an issue.

Other issues you have to think about mainly do to with performance of
the network stack. There are high performance GigE compliant network
drivers that use DMA and greatly reduce the CPU load on the machine
handling the video (as much as 30-40% less load, to down to a few %). I
tried out a couple of these drivers that came with my camera, and they
do make a huge difference. However, this may restrict the NIC to be used
with GigE only, and might cease to work with standard networking.

The camera we have came with a windows API and application software,
which is what we used to do the tests. I'm not sure if there are generic
windows / Linux GigE drivers yet.... 

Also, GigE cameras are quite expensive at the moment, since it's a new
technology. And the software standards are only just being standardized
(or only recently anyway). So it's also good to think about shielding of
the camera body, and to think about heat transfer (I thought about
gluing a CPU heat sink onto the side of my camera!).

Cheers,
Matthew

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Malitsky, Nikolay D
Sent: 11 June 2007 02:59
To: [email protected]
Subject: GigE Vision-compliant cameras

 Hello, 

Does anyone have EPICS-based solution or experience with GigE
Vision-compliant cameras. We are considering GC-1020 from Prosilica for
the ERL Beam Profile Monitor system
(http://www.prosilica.com/products/gc1020.html
<https://exchange2000.bnl.gov/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=https://exchange
2000.bnl.gov/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.prosilica.com/products
/gc1020.html> ).

Thank you,

Nikolay Malitsky

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Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System