[libdc1394-devel] Point Grey Camera info

[Carlos Y. V. <unb...@us...>]

Noticed a few questions about the Point Grey Dragonfly cameras.

I'm an Engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for only this
paragraph.  We approached Point Grey to make a set of cameras for us
to spec for stereo vision applications.  (namely CCD, SMALL, full
frame integration, SMALL, progressive, genlockable, SMALL, etc..) I
was essentially the technical contract manager for the cameras. I
evaluated all the prototypes that they sent to us. We chipped in the
NRE, and halfway through, buzz they were getting from us and others
they showed it to they decided to make it into a COTS product.  They
delivered the camera, and I wrote an IIDC camera driver for VxWorks.

Now, from here on out, I'm NOT a JPL employee.

The Dragonfly cameras are indeed IIDC v1.3 cameras, and report
themselves as such.  They also have a nifty feature of every Dragonfly
on the same 1394 bus will automatically genlock themselves to within
a couple hundred microseconds or so without CPU intervention.

When you query their capabilities, they will only report F5 and F6 at
their native resolutions B&W, at frame rates 30, 15, 7.5, and 3.75.
They DO NOT support F7, and do not report themselves as supporting it.
Re: Bourrant's message, Does libdc1394 not check to see if a
mode/format/framerate combination is supported before attempting?
There are at least 2 resolutions out there 640x480, and 1024x768.  One
camera cannot do the other.  There is also color versions, however,
they'll only report as B&W cameras and you get the Bayer Stipple.
You'll have to do your own color reconstructions. (sorry, that's JPL's
fault. The machine vision guys are picky about which color
reconstruction algorithm is done for which scene).

The only other thing I can say is that there is a non-IIDC mode
available as a write to an undocumented register.  640x240x50Hz.  I
only mention that since its in their provided FlyCap app.

On a personal note, I'm in the middle of reading through the source
and the web page to see if I can contribute in general.

--Carlos V.