Compatibility

Tested and developed with the following environment,

• PixeLINK camera model: PixeLINK GigE PL-B781G

• PixeLINK Software Development Kit 4.2 - Release 8.7.1 (~2014 including the 2017 version)

• Window 7 Pro (32 and 64 bit)

• Linux Ubuntu 16.04 (64bit) (libPxLApi.so.4.2.1.11)

• Python 2.7 (32 and 64 bit) and Python 3.6 (64bit)

Installation

Use Python’s pip tool to install this package:

pip install pixelink

There are several dependencies,

• decorator (required)

• numpy (optional)

• pillow (optional - used to save the images)

For Window’s users use the following binary repository to install numpy,

• http://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/#numpy

Once the Numpy+MKL wheel file is downloaded, then execute the following command (assuming numpy‑1.13.2+mkl‑cp36‑cp36m‑win_amd64.whl):

pip install numpy‑1.13.2+mkl‑cp36‑cp36m‑win_amd64.whl

sudo apt-get install libsdl2-2.0-0
sudo apt-get install libavcodec-ffmpeg56

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=~/Downloads/pixelink/lib

Examples

Frame grabbing with numpy installed,

>>> from pixelink import PixeLINK
>>> cam = PixeLINK()
>>> cam.shutter = 0.002
>>> cam.grab()
array([[17, 18, 17, ..., 18, 16, 17],
       [16, 17, 17, ..., 18, 17, 17],
       [17, 17, 16, ..., 17, 17, 17],
       ...,
       [20, 20, 21, ..., 20, 20, 20],
       [21, 18, 20, ..., 21, 20, 21],
       [22, 21, 20, ..., 20, 21, 20]], dtype=uint8)
>>> raw_data = cam.grab()
>>> raw_data.mean()
21.016006038647344
>>> cam.shutter = 0.003
>>> raw_data = cam.grab()
>>> raw_data.mean()
29.30297418478261
>>> cam.close()
>>>
>>> from PIL import Image
>>> im = Image.fromarray(raw_data)
>>> im.save('test1.png')

Frame grabbing without numpy installed,

>>> from pixelink import PixeLINK
>>> from PIL import Image
>>> cam = PixeLINK()
>>> cam.shutter = 0.004
>>> data = cam.grab()
>>> data
<ctypes.c_char_Array_6624000 object at 0x00000000039EF448>
>>> cam.size
(2208, 3000)
>>> cam.pixel_size
1
>>> im = Image.frombuffer('L', cam.size, data)
__main__:1: RuntimeWarning: the frombuffer defaults may change in a future release; for portability, change the call to read:
  frombuffer(mode, size, data, 'raw', mode, 0, 1)
>>> im.save('test2.png')
>>> cam.close()

Continuous frame grabbing in a thread,

import threading
import time

from pixelink import PixeLINK, PxLerror


def grab_frames(cam):
    frame_num = 0
    time_start = time.time()
    print('Continuous frame grabbing started...')
    while cam.is_open():
        frame_num += 1
        try:
            data = cam.grab()
            # TODO: do something with the data...
        except PxLerror as exc:
            print('ERROR: grab_frames:', str(exc))
            continue
        t_total = time.time() - time_start
        if frame_num % 10 == 0:
            frame_rate = float(frame_num) / t_total
            print('#%04d FPS: %0.3f frames/sec' % (frame_num, frame_rate))


def main():
    cam = PixeLINK()
    cam.shutter = 0.002  # exposure time in seconds
    th = threading.Thread(target=grab_frames, args=[cam])
    th.start()
    try:
        while True:
            time.sleep(1.0)
    except KeyboardInterrupt:
        print('Caught CTRL+C')
    finally:
        print('Closing camera...')
        cam.close()
        print('Waiting for thread...')
        th.join()
        print('Done.')

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

Links

• Documentation: https://hsmit.gitlab.io/pixelink/

• Repository: https://gitlab.com/hsmit/pixelink

• PyPi Location: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pixelink

• PyPi Test Location: https://test.pypi.org/project/pixelink/