Machine Vision
Full 64 Bit Driver Support with pylon 2.1
Basler is launching release 2.1 of its free "pylon" driver package. This release focuses on 64 bit system support for Microsoft Windows.
Standard 32 bit PC systems can directly address up to four GBs of RAM (Random Access Memory) and leave slightly more than half of the memory available for applications. This limitation can cause stability problems, especially in multi-camera applications with complex processing requirements. "The memory swapping schemes forced on a 32 bit system by the four GB memory limit can cause images to be dropped and this is unacceptable for vision systems," explains Werner Borchert, Product Manager at Basler Components. "In a 64 bit Windows system, this kind of RAM limitation no longer exists. And since the cost of a GB of memory has dropped tremendously, the investment needed to move to a 64 bit system is small."
What’s new?
The new DirectShow64 module in the Basler pylon package also offers full memory access to applications that work with DirectShow technology. The support for extended memory enables the option of using a long, uninterrupted recording time as well as recording at HDTV resolution.
An additional highlight of pylon 2.1 is "multicast" support, which makes the camera image data available on more than one PC. This capability can be used, for example, to display images on several PCs or for shared image processing. This feature opens a range of possibilities for creating distributed inspection systems that use many GigE Vision cameras connected to many PCs. When this multicast capability is combined with pylon’s 64 bit support, it means that a new class of inspection system performance can be reached on standard PCs.
The 2.1 release also provides reworked installation scripts that improve the comfort level for Windows Vista installations, even for 64 bit Vista. All six pylon drivers are fully certified by Microsoft, which makes Basler one of the few providers with a full certification.
The uploading and downloading of data files to a Basler camera is supported by a new extension of the pylon C++ API. The pylon viewer will also offer this functionality via simple GUI selections. This will make the new Shading Correction feature for runner color cameras much easier.
An additional new extension of pylon’s API is the support of storing and reloading camera parameters into data files on the PC hard disk. Such a feature sounds easy, but becomes very complex when the details of the generic approach used by GenICam and its different versions are taken into account. But now it requires just a simple click in the pylon Viewer applications to ‘clone’ complete settings into all connected cameras.
All of the new features and improvements included in the pylon 2.1 release are listed in the Release Notes that can be downloaded from the pylon information pages on our website.
A free download of the pylon 2.1 release, including the SDK, can also be found at Basler's website.
>>Download the pylon 2.1 release now!
For more information, please contact us at +49 4102 463-515 or e-mail us at bc.support.europe@baslerweb.com.
The new DirectShow64 module in the Basler pylon package also offers full memory access to applications that work with DirectShow technology. The support for extended memory enables the option of using a long, uninterrupted recording time as well as recording at HDTV resolution.
An additional highlight of pylon 2.1 is "multicast" support, which makes the camera image data available on more than one PC. This capability can be used, for example, to display images on several PCs or for shared image processing. This feature opens a range of possibilities for creating distributed inspection systems that use many GigE Vision cameras connected to many PCs. When this multicast capability is combined with pylon’s 64 bit support, it means that a new class of inspection system performance can be reached on standard PCs.
The 2.1 release also provides reworked installation scripts that improve the comfort level for Windows Vista installations, even for 64 bit Vista. All six pylon drivers are fully certified by Microsoft, which makes Basler one of the few providers with a full certification.
The uploading and downloading of data files to a Basler camera is supported by a new extension of the pylon C++ API. The pylon viewer will also offer this functionality via simple GUI selections. This will make the new Shading Correction feature for runner color cameras much easier.
An additional new extension of pylon’s API is the support of storing and reloading camera parameters into data files on the PC hard disk. Such a feature sounds easy, but becomes very complex when the details of the generic approach used by GenICam and its different versions are taken into account. But now it requires just a simple click in the pylon Viewer applications to ‘clone’ complete settings into all connected cameras.
All of the new features and improvements included in the pylon 2.1 release are listed in the Release Notes that can be downloaded from the pylon information pages on our website.
A free download of the pylon 2.1 release, including the SDK, can also be found at Basler's website.
>>Download the pylon 2.1 release now!
For more information, please contact us at +49 4102 463-515 or e-mail us at bc.support.europe@baslerweb.com.
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