Using Pylon Cameras

Install Pylon SDK

  1. Get the pylon Camera Software Suite (5.0.12) from here. Then follow the instructions in the INSTALL file of the pylon suite. Pasted below for reference (2, 3, 4):

  2. Change to the directory which contains this INSTALL file, e.g.:

    cd ~/pylon-5.0.0.1234-x86

  3. Extract the corresponding SDK into /opt:

    sudo tar -C /opt -xzf pylonSDK*.tar.gz

  4. Install udev rules to set up permissions for basler USB cameras:

    ./setup-usb.sh

Using Pylon in Apptainer

When accessing the cameras from within Apptainer containers, you need to either install the Pylon SDK in the container, or you can simply bind it from the host system (assuming it’s installed there) using

apptainer shell --bind=/opt/pylon5 container.sif

Note that even if the Pylon SDK is installed in the container, it may be needed to set up the udev rules on the host system (see last step in the section above).

Set Device Name

The Pylon camera drivers in trifinger_cameras expect a unique device name (“DeviceUserID”) written to the camera to be able to identify it (especially important for the TriCameraDriver where the three cameras need to be distinguished.

There are two ways to set the name:

  1. Using the pylon_write_device_user_id_to_camera command that is included in the package.

  2. Via the “pylon Viewer” application that is shipped with the Pylon SDK 6 or later [1]. The “Device User ID” can be modified in the “Device Control” category of the camera settings.

Note that after setting a new name, the camera needs to be reset for the change to become active (either via the pylon Viewer app or by simply unplugging and plugging in again).

For the TriFinger robots, we use the IDs “camera60”, “camera180” and “camera300” based on their approximate angular position relative to the fingers, see Names of Fingers and Cameras.

Camera Configuration

For configuration of camera settings like frame rate, white balancing, etc., see Pylon Settings.

Command Line Tools

This package contains a number of command line tools for general handling of Pylon cameras: