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MVTec Interfaces and Plugins
Reference Documentation

For image acquisition with HALCON, MVTec provides a number of:

Important

  • The Image Source Plugins and create_image_source supersede the classical Image Acquisition Interfaces.
    Therefore, for new projects it is recommended to only use the HALCON Image Sources for all image acquisition purposes.
  • This website only covers documentation for Image Source Plugins.

Image Source Plugins abstract the various technologies used to transfer images from the imaging device to the receiving application.
Plugins can be selected and installed with the MVTec Software Manager:

After installation the Image Source Plugins exist in form of .cti files on each target machine.
Image Source Plugins implement the GenICam GenTL standard. They can also be referred to as "GenTL producers".
GenICam GenTL producers provided by other manufacturers are treated analogously by HALCON and can also be used with the image source operator set.

Using other manufacturers GenTL producers

If a provider of machine vision equipment advertises GenICam GenTL compatibility, it means a GenTL producer exists which bridges the gap between the open GenTL specification and the manufacturers proprietary back-end. These producers are usually automatically available after installing the manufacturer's proprietary SDK. Consult the manufacturers documentation for more in depth instructions. At runtime plugins not provided by MVTec are found by HALCON through the environment variable GENICAM_GENTL64_PATH (or GENICAM_GENTL32_PATH), which lists all the paths that contain .cti files.

Image Source Plugins provided by MVTec

  • mvtec_gigevision
    x64-win64 x64-linux aarch64-linux armv7a-linux
    Provides access to all GigE Vision cameras, sensors and non-streaming devices. All versions of the GigE Vision standard are supported. This plugin contains the same GigE Vision standard implementation that is contained in the GigEVision2 Image Acquisition Interface.

  • mvtec_usb3vision
    x64-win64 x64-linux aarch64-linux armv7a-linux
    Provides access to all USB3 Vision cameras and sensors. This plugin contains the same USB3 Vision standard implementation that is contained in the USB3Vision Image Acquisition Interface.

  • mvtec_mediafoundation
    x64-win64
    Provides access to webcams via the Microsoft Media Foundation API which is the native way of accessing cameras on Microsoft Windows systems. This plugin contains the same low-level implementation that is contained in the MediaFoundation Image Acquisition Interface.

  • mvtec_realsense
    x64-win64 x64-linux aarch64-linux
    Provides access to Intel RealSense 3D vision sensors via the Intel RealSense SDK. This plugin contains the same low-level implementation that is contained in the RealSense Image Acquisition Interface.

  • mvtec_gstreamer
    x64-linux aarch64-linux armv7a-linux
    Interfaces to the open source GStreamer multimedia platform. As such a variety of imaging devices and technologies which are GStreamer compatible are usable. This plugin contains the same low-level implementation that is contained in the GStreamer Image Acquisition Interface.