Drivers for Alvium USB cameras

How to run

1 camera

To run just 1 camera simply run in a terminal roslaunch pp_alvium_driver rgb_only_python.launch or nir_only_python.launch.

2 cameras simultaneously

To run 2 cameras simultaneously:

run roslaunch pp_alvium_driver rgb_only_python.launch in a terminal
then open another terminal, and run conda activate <<virtual env>>
in the activated conda's <virtual env>> run roslaunch pp_alvium_driver nir_only_python.launch

The whole point for the virtual environemnt is that the way above gives you maximum frame rate from both cameras whereas using multithreading gives you way lower Hz and things start breaking up when my second camera wants to achieve fps > 20 Hz. I presume this is due to the fact that Python uses only 1 core for both cameras to operate.

How to install vimba in Conda's virtual environemnt?

Just install vimba to a default system's interpreter. And then literally copy manually vimba and VimbaPython-1.0.1.dist-info folders from the python base where they have just been installed (e.g. in /usr/local/lib/python3.8) to your venv folder, for example /home/maciej/miniconda3/envs/4ros1/lib/python3.8/site-packages.

Remarks

Install Vimba_4_2 for intel processors or Vimba 5.1 for arm to a desired python directory as instructed by VimbaPython/Install.sh
Make sure that GENICAM_GENTL64_PATH points to path/2/vimba/Vimba_4_2/VimbaUSBTL/CTI/x86_64bit or for vimba 5.1 accordingly
This code has been tested on python 3.8

mac137 / pp_alvium_driver_dataset