Is there a way to determine from a connected camera if it is currently acquiring after a call to arv_camera_start_acquisition has been made? Apparently one can call arv_camera_start_acquisition multiple times with no issue, but I’m interested in some way to ask the camera itself. I didn’t find anything in the Aravis API, but is there some register that I can read or other means?
I’m using a Lucid Vision Labs Atlas10 ATX470S-MT over GigE but I’m hoping for a general solution.
Have a look at SFNC (Standard Features Naming Convention): https://www.emva.org/wp-content/uploads/GenICam_SFNC_1_5_1.pdf , which is usually followed, then you might have AcquisitionStatus genicam property which you can read (arv-tool makes this really easy).
arv_camera_start_acquisition is really a shorthand for writing AcquisitionStart (plus check TriggerSelector and others).
One model I have XML of here it seems (based on a rather terse description) to be reporting whether the sensor is acquiring data (but can’t test now), not whether the acquisition was started, but I am not sure.
@eudoxos Thank you. Unfortunately my camera doesn’t appear to support AcquisitionStatus or AcquisitionStatusSelector even though they are listed as “recommended” in the GenICam SFNC 2.3 which is applicable to my camera. I can reach out to the camera vendor to inquire.
What I would do: dump arv-tool values, then start acquisition (via arv-tool or as you normally do), dump arv-tool values again, and diff them.
Good idea. I just tried this, but unfortunately the only things I see changing are things I’d expect to change over time: DevicePower, Timestamp, DeviceUpTime, LinkUpTime, CalculatedMean, CalculatedMedian, GevPrimaryApplicationSocket, and PtpDataSet. I don’t know much about the last two but these appear to change over time independent of AcquisitionStart/AcquisitionStop having been called or not.
Additionally, I also tried running arv-tool-0.8 -d genicam:3 control AcquisitionStart and arv-tool-0.8 -d genicam:3 control AcquisitionStop to see what registers where changed by these commands. Unfortunately, the only registers I saw appear to be immediately reset to zero following the commands. I checked this via calls to arv_device_read_register in my code.
So, looks like I’ll need to change how I do some things in my software and talk to the camera vendor. Thanks again. I’m marking your first response as a solution as it may be so for other users whose devices support the AcquisitionStatus property.
Thank you for the report. If you talk to Lucid and get any useful answer, please post here a summary. Might be useful.