Pointgrey camera driver problem

hi guys…

I’m fighting with this little point grey flea2G firewire800 cam.
I installed Flycapture and the FlyStream driver and tried to switch the drivers with the driverControlGUI as suggested here: https://discourse.vvvv.org/t/5009

but somehow VideoIn doesn’t give me any option to select the cam.

any ideas on this?

the point grey driver stuff it’s really a mess, I’m tired of hacking around with this shit… grrr

jesus, this point grey driver stuff really brings me some grey hair…
I’m taking some notes about this here, as it will come up on other fellow patchers workbenches.

I’ve tried the following on both:

  • Windows XP 32 bit
  • Windows 7 64 bit

(without success)

Source: Point Grey Knowledge Base
********************************_

SUMMARY:
This article explains why Point Grey imaging cameras sometimes do not work as expected with DirectShow applications, and how to fix this issue.
APPLICABLE PRODUCTS :
All Imaging Products •

CAUSE:

Sometimes when installing or upgrading the FlyCapture SDK, the DLL files that enable the camera driver to work with DirectShow interfaces are not registered to the Windows Registry. As a result, DirectShow applications do not work with the camera. When this happens, you must register the DLLs manually.

Note: On 64-bit systems, the 32-bit version of the FlyCapture SDK must be installed in order to run 32-bit DirectShow applications. However,when installing the 32-bit FlyCapture SDK on Win64, the 32-bit DirectShow DLLs are not automaticallly registered. In this case, the required 32-bit DLLs must also be registered manually.
ANSWER:

To register DirectShow DLLs manually:

  1. Open the Windows Command Prompt utility
  2. Navigate to the \bin folder in the FlyCapture directory.
    * For FlyCapture 1.x installations, the default path is C:\Program Files\Point Grey Research\PGR FlyCapture\bin
    * For FlyCapture 2.x installations, the default path is C:\Program Files\Point Grey Research\FlyCapture2\bin
  3. Execute the following commands:
    regsvr32 PGRDirectShowDecoder.ax
    regsvr32 PGRDirectShowSource.ax

Note: If this procedure results in error 0x80004005, run the Command Prompt utility under elevated privileges. To do this, right click on the Command Prompt shortcut icon and select Run as…Administrator.

The attached Technical Application Note sounds really promising first, however, some links in the document are dead and plenty of outdated software is required to be installed on your machine…
At the end it seems that you need to compile your own driver or so…
Somehow it doesn’t really work out at the end.

pingTechnical Application Note from Point Grey for develo DirectShow applications with FlyCapture (146.3 kB)

Ok, here might be a step forward:

According to the friendly Pointgrey support this issue occurs on 64 systems because there are different Point Grey drivers for 64 and 32 bit systems.
V4 is a 32 bit application, therefore it needs 32 bit point grey drivers.

to make the driver available for vvvv in on 64 bit systems, try this:

  • install flycapture2 64 bit
  • restart computer and run the setup of flycapture again
  • at “deinstall, repair, modify” choose modify and pick “install 32 bit components”
  • open CMD (important: open as administrator!) and navigate to the folder c:/
    program files (x86)/point grey research/flycapture2/bin (you should have a bin64 folder there aswell but go into “bin”) and register the two .ax files as described above. If you get an error msg, check if did start the commandline editor as administrator.

now the point grey driver should be available within the VideoIn.
However I still don’t get an actual video image.

I’ve used point grey cams before 4 years ago or so and the drivers were shit then and I’ve found them to be unhelpful and arrogant , I think I would Reccomend not using them where ever possible, especially if your based in Europe as there are other better cams out there!

Borrowed a PGR (point gray) dragonfly 2 cam for the media opera vienna. Needed to get it running on a windows 7 machine. Works like a charm - and this is how I did it:

What you will need:
flycapture_1_8_3_26_x86.exe
(downloadable from ptgrey.com after Registration with serial number = “web code” only - no chance to get it without)
I also tried the 2.x drivers, but got stuck - did not investigate further. Maybe they work better then the 1.x - give them a try.

First: install flycapture.
Do not select “1) Texas Instruments 1394 card” even if you got
one. What the installer tries to find out is wether to use the
proprietary driver of point grey or the microsoft standard
driver. You can change the driver later with the “Driver Control
GUI” if you need to.

Click the Start button and search for “cmd” (Terminal, DOS-Box).
Right-Click the icon found and select “Run as Administrator”.
In the DOS-Box navigate to the PGR program directory:

cd “C:\Program Files\Point Grey Research\PGR FlyCapture\bin”

Execute the following commands:
regsvr32 PGRDirectShowDecoder.ax
regsvr32 PGRDirectShowSource.ax

Most problems on Windows systems are due to security. I guess the
installer tries to register both DirectShow modules, but fails.
That’s why you need to register them manually.

No need to reboot.
After registering the DirectShow ax’s, you will be able to select
“PointGrey” in the “driver” pin of a “VideoIn” node in vvvv.

Next step is to select the right video size and format. Use the
FlyCap software that shows up in your program list to set up the
camera to the resolution you need. In my case it’s 1024x768 with
Y8 encoding. Now match this values in the VideoIn node. I set the
width pin to 1024
height pin to 768
video format pin to Y800.
Don’t need to take care of the framerate.
Voila! There it is. The video. On the output. Enjoy!

pointgrey drivers is not good at all, the customer service is replying question, but it is useless! i had problem with win 7 64 & firefly months ago.

so, which firewire HD cams does everyone use here?

i used ids imaging cams the last few years, either USB or GigE. sorry no FW
there are quite some resources in the forum regarding these cams, drivers, configurations. and there is a plugin.

therefore i can recommend them.

what about this one
http://www.ids-imaging.de/frontend/products.php?cam_id=137