This post describes how to use a FLIR camera on Linux (Ubuntu 16.04).
Step 0 RTFM
As the camera package says, let's read the Getting Started Manual (GSM).
As soon as you read the manual, you can see the manual is not up-to-date. The followings is just a summary of the manual from my understanding.
1. (Optional) Install interface card
2. Install FlyCapture software (or Spinnaker SDK)
3. Enable the drivers for the installed card
4. Prepare a camera
5. Connect the camera (you need GPIO cable if you need to synchronize multiple cameras)
This post says that Linux Ubuntu sets the buffer size to 16 MB for USB devices and the buffer size may not be enough for high speed or high resolution cameras. That's why we need USB-FS (Full Speed). At the very bottom of the post, you can see how to configure USB-FS on Ubuntu.
Step 1 Install the SDK or software
This technical note describes the difference between FlyCapture and Spinnaker in detail.
I chose the Spinnaker SDK for my BlackFly.
The SDK package (spinnaker-1.13.0.31-amd64 in my case) contains user-friendly README and I just followed the instruction. Please refer to the README.
1. install dependency
2. update USB configuration
3. install the deb files
1.1 Install Spinnaker for Python
I installed python package as well. The package (spinnaker_python_1.13.0.31_linux_x86_64.tar) contains wheel files for various python versions, 2.7, 3.6, and 3.7.
All examples I tried worked!!
Step 2 Camera preparation
1. attach camera mount to the camera body
2. attach lens
3. attach tripod
Step 3 Test on PC using SpinView
The installation script installs the app SpinView. With it, we can plug and play FLIR camera as the following figure shows.
Step 4 Play with favorite language
The Spinnaker SDK site says that the SDK supports C, C++, C#, and VB.NET. However, the installed documentation contains only ones for C and C++ but not one for C#...
I will look for any documentation or examples for C# and post its information if found.
