Swing Catalyst FLIR BLACKFLY S USB User manual
FLIR BLACKFLY S USB
Getting Started guide
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Attach the tripod adapter to the camera body using
the 4 black Phillips head screws included with the
camera.
Unpack the lens and make sure to remove the plastic
lens covers.
Remove the sensor cover from the camera and attach
the lens to the camera with a twisting motion.
Fasten the cable to the camera by tightening the
locking screws.
HARDWARE SETUP
Follow these steps after unboxing your camera:
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ADJUSTING THE CAMERA LENS
Focus: Adjusting towards the ∞ symbol will make
objects further away come into focus.
Aperture: The iris adjustment controls how much
light is able to pass through the lens. A more closed
aperture will result in a sharper image, but the image
will also be darker.
Zoom: Adjusts the zoom of the lens; wide or telephoto.
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This lens has three adjustments, from top to bottom:
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Visit www.swingcatalyst.com/downloads, select
”see all drivers” and download the driver for
”Blackfly S & Spinnaker compatible cameras”. Once
downloaded, click on the executable and follow the
setup wizard.
// Choose ”Camera Evaluation”.
// Leave ”I will use GigE Cameras” box checked.
DRIVER INSTALLATION
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Make sure the camera is connected to your
computer and that the LED in the back of the
camera is blinking green.
// Start Swing Catalyst and click Settings, and
Cameras.
// Select your camera from the list, and click
Advanced.
The Advanced Camera Settings window exposes
many settings which you might find handy.
Note that most of the settings are set to auto.
We can change these settings to get better
control over the image quality for video analysis.
We will take a look at each setting in the next
pages.
CONFIGURING THE CAMERA
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ADVANCED CAMERA SETTINGS
Frame rate indicates how many frames the camera is capable of recording per second.
Checking the Frame rate control enable box will allow you to manually set the frame rate, if this box is
unchecked the frame rate is essentially set to auto (note: the maximum frame rate of this camera is 226
FPS. To achieve the maximum frame rate all of the settings need to be set to manual).
Frame rate can be limited by the shutter speed and the device link throughput settings. In this case in order
to achieve the full frame rate we need to increase the throughput (more on that later).
Changing the frame rate
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ADVANCED CAMERA SETTINGS
Shutter speed is the duration of time which the camera shutter is open, which affects the amount of light
the camera sensor is exposed to and the time it takes to
Unless we’re outdoors in sunlight it’s better to use a manual shutter speed, otherwise it’s likely the video
will be too blurry for sports analysis. To reduce blur we recommend a shutter speed less than 2ms (2000μs),
with adequate lighting the shutter speed can be less than 1ms (1000μs).
How bright the video image will be is a combination of the shutter speed, gain settings, lens aperture and
how much light is available.
Changing the shutter speed
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Gain is an electronic amplification of the video signal.
The higher the dB value, the brighter the image, however there will also be more noise as a result which
may make the overall video quality seem poor. Sometimes it is worth having a slightly higher gain at the
expense of noise in order to bring the shutter speed down to get sharp frame by frame video of an object
(e.g club at impact, baseball bat etc).
Having gain set to auto is preferable in changing light conditions, but if you have an indoors environment
setting gain to manual is the better way to go.
ADVANCED CAMERA SETTINGS
Changing camera gain
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Black level can be considered a form of brightness adjustment, where the black level corresponds to the
minimum value that any pixel on the camera sensor will return. By increasing the black level value we can
make the image brighter.
Our recommendation is to leave this at the default values.
For more details on improving your video image please see this support article which has comparison
photos.
ADVANCED CAMERA SETTINGS
Changing gamma and black levels
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White balance will affect the color temperature of the video image. The wrong white balance can cause
the colours of the image to look strange, often appearing too red or too green.
Normally we recommend to leave this setting to auto (continuous) but in order to achieve the maximum
frame rate this needs to be turned off. By enabling auto white balance we sacrifice some frame rate
leaving us at 200 FPS instead of the camera maximum 226 FPS.
ADVANCED CAMERA SETTINGS
Changing the camera’s white balance
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The Device Link Throughput Limit limits the maximum bandwidth of the data that will be streamed out
by the device on the selected link.
Sometimes, especially on a laptop, running two USB cameras is above the bandwidth limit of the USB
controller. You can lower the Device Link Throughput Limit to mitigate this, which will also lower the FPS.
Continue to lower it until you find a threshold that allows for the cameras to perform without any issues.
Please note that the Blackfly S USB camera runs up to 226 FPS, depending on the hardware.
ADVANCED CAMERA SETTINGS
Device Link Throughput Limit
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Region of Interest is a way to reduce the image size and by extension also the bandwidth required for each
image. By reducing the image size we can increase the frame rate as the overall pixel readout requirement
is smaller.
Reducing the height and width can have a positive effect on frame rate and lowering the bandwidth
requirements.
ADVANCED CAMERA SETTINGS
Applying Region Of Interest (ROI)
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To change the region of interest we can drag the height slider to the left to reduce the height of the image.
Since we’ve changed the height of the image, we can also now change the Y offset which can be helpful as
an alternative to physically moving the camera due to the reduced image size.
If we go back to the Camera tab and look under frame rate, we now see the maximum frame rate can be
set increased, this is because we applied a region of interest by reducing the height of the camera sensor).
ADVANCED CAMERA SETTINGS
Applying Region Of Interest (ROI) cont.
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TROUBLESHOOTING
Region Of Interest (ROI):
Using a region of interest will reduce the overall image size and boost the FPS, but also it can help lower
the bandwidth usage which in turn could reduce dropped frames (please refer to pages 14 and 15 on how
to use ROI).
Other problems:
Depending on your hardware it might not be the best to have the sharpening and denoise filters on, turning
these off will reduce some CPU & GPU usage. You can find the camera filters in the Advanced Camera
Settings Filters tab. You can find more information about filters here.
If you are experiencing any other issues, please visit our Support Center
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