FreiPose_Recorder

Based on RecordTool by Christian https://github.com/lmb-freiburg/RecordTool

It allows to record synchronous video from a multi camera rig using Basler cameras and an Arduino or MCC-DAQ for trigger generation. It includes a GUI for visualization of video streams as well as changing camera settings. GUI can be used in remote mode and be controlled via TCP/IP.

read the docs https://optophys-lab.github.io/FreiPose_Recorder/

Installation guide

Select and install suitable release of Pylon's libraries from: https://www.baslerweb.com/de/downloads/downloads-software/#type=pylonsoftware

(Optional) Create and activate a conda environment

conda env create -n Recorder_env python=3.9
conda activate Recorder_env

Install the following python packages (preferably in a virtual environment):

git clone https://github.com/Optophys-Lab/FreiPose_Recorder.git
cd FreiPose_Recorder
pip install -e .

To Run the GUI from the commandline:

#make sure conda env is activated
#make sure $CWD is FreiPose_Recorder
python GUI_run.py

User guide

Camera names (optional)

To more easily identify your cameras you can give them custom names.

Cameras do not have to be manually added to the enums anymore. After first connection to the camera, the serial number is saved in the cameras.json top level file. This file is used to load the cameras on subsequent runs. Its a jsonized ditionary with SN as key and camera name and context as value. Context is an int which is used to identify the frames from each camera. Its being hashed from camera name to prevent duplicates.

After first connection to the camera you can modify cameras.json to give your cameras unique names.

general config

Can be found in configs/params.py file. It contains the following fields:

• ENABLE_REMOTE Boolean to enable remote connection to control GUI via network. Set to False if not using this feature
• USE_ARDUINO_TRIGGER Boolean to use python board as trigger, requires serial connection to the board
• CALIB_DURATION duration of the calibration in ms
• CALIB_WAIT waiting time before the calibration starts in ms
• SAVE_TIMESTAMPS Boolean to save the timestamps of the frames
• TRIGGER_LINE_IN Input-line on the GPIO cable for the camera for the trigger signal
• MAX_FPS maximum fps for the camera
• LOG2FILE Boolean to log to a file
• CONVERT2 Mono8 or RGB8 Colorformat for conversion

Camera settings

Camera settings are loaded from the default.settings.json file. Upon connection to the camera, the settings are loaded, if this file is not available dialog asks for any other settings files.

default.settings.json is an jsonized dictionary containing parameters for each camera (exposure time, gain, colormode, white balance values) and further general settings, such as save path for videos, preferred fps(recording and play fps for free-running mode and only play fps for trigger mode, there the recording fps is dictated by the trigger frequency), codec used for video encoding, crf defining the compression level(higher value - higher compression), and boolean to use HW-triggermode.

Start the RecordTool

from activated environment run:

python GUI_run.py    

Default settings to be loaded upon connection should be saved as FreiPose_Recorder/default_settings.settings.json