Bluefox2

Build status

This driver depends on package camera_base

https://github.com/KumarRobotics/bluefox2

mvBluefox MLC

Supported hardware

This driver should work with any Matrix-Vision Bluefox usb2.0 MLC cameras (bluefox2).

Finding camera serial number

Run rosrun bluefox2 bluefox2_list_cameras to list info about all connected cameras.

API Stability

The ROS API of this driver should be considered unstable.

ROS API

Single nodelet

single_nodelet.launch is a nodelet for a single bluefox2 camera.
Can be included in custom launch files.

Example

example.lauch is an example of how to include single_nodelet.launch in custom launch files.

Published topics

~image_raw (sensor_msgs/Image)

The unprocessed image data.

~camera_info (sensor_msgs/CameraInfo)

Contains the camera calibration (if calibrated) and extra data about the camera configuration.

Parameters

Common interface

~device (string)

The device serial id.

~fps (double)

The desired frame rate of the camera.

Normal parameters

~camera_name (string, default: mv_<serial>)

Camera name used by camera_info_manager for loading calibration file, should be the same as the name in mv_<serial>.yaml.

~camera (string, default: <camera_name>)

Name of the node.

~frame_id (string, default: <camera>)

frame id of the published topics.

~calib_url (string)

camera calibration URL.

Dynamically Reconfigurable Parameters

See the dynamic_reconfigure package for details on dynamically reconfigurable parameters.

white balance parameter:

-1 - wbp_unavailable
0~5 - wbp_tungsten and friends
6 ~ wbp_user1
7 - wbp_calibrate, calibrate next frame for white balance

For calibrating white balance, first point the camera at a white board, then select wbp_calibrate, the mvIMPACT driver will calibrate white balance automatically and save it to wbp_user1.

~dcfm (int, default: 1)

dark current filter mode:

0 - dcfm_off
1 - dcfm_on
2 - dcfm_calibrate
3 - correction_image

If you are using a color camera, you would want to perform a 'dark current filter calibration` to enhance the quality of acquisition. This is done with the following steps:

Start the bluefox node, let it run for about 5-6 minutes until the temperature of the sensor reaches a stable value. Then you would see something like this.
Put the lense cap on so that the image looks like this. You can see that there are some pixels that are not completely dark, this is due to the effect of dark current.
Select dcfm_calibrate from the reconfigure server. The driver will do the dark current calibration and then switch the filter on. You can verify the result by selecting correction_image and you will see this.
Then you can switch back to dcfm_on and your image would look much better then before.
This calibration process cannot be done automatically since it requires the sensor be running for a few minutes and manually putting the lense cap on.

Read this article as well.

~hdr (bool, default: false)

Only 200wG camera supports this mode, set hdr to true for other cameras will have no effect.

This mode is required when high fps desired which allows 200wG to work at 90 fps and 200bG at 24 fps (with ctm = 1). Using this will result in imprecise time stamp of captured image. Use with caution.

Hardware sync

Notice that if you are using two 200w cameras, there's no need to use hardware synchronization because software synchronization is supported.

Using 2 mvBlueFOX-MLC cameras in Master-Slave mode

Single-board version (mvBlueFOX-MLC2xx)

Install mvIMPACT Driver

Run:

./install/install.sh

This will install mvIMPACT_Acquire SDK to /opt.

wxPropView

If you install the full matrix vision driver, you will have wxPropView installed to your system. It's an GUI application that let you inspect all properties of the camera.

FAQs

I have the driver locally in my ros package, but every time I plug in a camera, I need to change the permission.
- Simple fix:
```
sudo chmod 777 /dev/bus/usb/xxx/xxx
```
/dev/bus/usb/xxx/xxx can be easily identified with the error information ros provids.
- Permanent fix: Adding a rule to /etc/udev/rules.d by the following command
```
sudo cp -f path_to_driver/Scripts/51-mvbf.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/
sudo service udev reload
```
Camera acquisition failure after being unplugged and plugged back in If you are using linux kernel 3.13.0, then it's likely that you will encounter this problem. The solution is to install the latest kernel, eg. > 3.13

ctu-mrs / bluefox2