Tetracam ADC Owner's manual
1
21601 Devonshire St. Suite 310
Chatsworth Ca. 91311
www.tetracam.com
Tetracam ADC
Installation and Operation
Rev 1.6
Copyright Tetracam Inc. 2008
Questions and comments regarding this document should be addressed to;
Steve Heinold
2
THE ADC CAMERA............................................................................................................................. 3
HOST SOFTWARE AND USB DRIVER INSTALLATION:............................................................... 3
PIXELWRENCH2................................................................................................................................. 3
SENSORLINK ....................................................................................................................................... 3
CAMERA PHYSICAL LAYOUT AND INTERCONNECTS .............................................................. 5
OPTICS AND FILTERS........................................................................................................................ 6
MOUNTING THE CAMERA................................................................................................................ 6
SIMPLE UN-TETHERED OPERATION............................................................................................. 7
TETHERED OPERATION................................................................................................................... 7
TETRACAM VIDEOVIEWER OPERATION..................................................................................... 7
THE CAMERA MENU.......................................................................................................................... 7
TROUBLESHOOTING THE ADC....................................................................................................... 9
MANAGING AND PROCESSING ADC IMAGES............................................................................ 10
ADC SPECIFIC FEATURES IN PIXELWRENCH2......................................................................... 10
SPECIFICATIONS.............................................................................................................................. 11
3
The ADC Camera
The ADC is a single sensor digital camera designed and optimized for capture of visible light wavelengths
longer than 520nm and near-infrared wavelengths up to 920nm. The primary use of this product is the
recording vegetation canopy reflectance. The resulting image is suitable for derivation of several vegetation
indices.
This manual is applicable to ADC units with a case serial number of 220339 and higher.
The camera is available in 3.2 mPel and 5.0 mPel versions.
Before camera images can be retrieved and used you must install an application program and the camera
specific USB driver.
Host software and USB driver installation:
On the CD shipped with the camera you will find application folders for PW2 and the optional SensorLink
(if you purchased it).
If your computer does not have the Microsoft .NET 2.0 framework installed, the PixelWrench2 installer
will try to open Microsoft.com and download a file called dotNetfx.exe. This is the installer for .NET 2.0.
This file is also on the CD in the root directory where you can run it directly prior to installing
PixelWrench2.
PixelWrench2
PixelWrench2 is a powerful image editing program with several tools specific to multi-spectral images and
working with Tetracam ADC and MCA cameras.
Open the PW2 folder and run Setup.Exe. This will install PixelWrench2. See the PixelWrench2 online help
for more information.
PW2 can open ADC proprietary DCM10, RAW10 and RAW8 image files along with several standard
image file types (BMP, JPEG, TIF, PNG etc.)
SensorLink
If you purchased the optional SensorLink application you will find a folder by that name on the CDROM
included with the camera.
SensorLink is a GPS waypoint triggering application enabling camera triggering at pre-defined waypoints.
It uses the same .NET 2.0 framework. Simply run Setup.exe in the SensorLink folder to install it. See the
SensorLink online help for more information.
Connecting the camera:
Connect the USB cable from a working USB port on the computer to the connector labelled USB on the
camera interconnect panel. Apply 12VDC with Center Positive polarity to the power connector. The small
wall plug type power supply shipped with the camera is provided for this or you may install 8 AA size
batteries following the polarity diagram on the camera product label.
USB driver installation:
On Windows XP systems, the first time the camera is connected to a USB port, Windows will fire the New
Hardware Found wizard. This will guide you through installation of the camera driver called SvStream.sys.
Do not let Windows search for the driver. In every case select the option where you specify the name and
location of the driver. The driver SvStream.sys and it’s information file SvStream.inf will be copied to your
Windows/System32/Drivers folder when you install either PixelWrench2 or SensorLink. When the driver
installation wizard asks for a location browse to Windows/System32/Drivers.
When the driver has been installed you will be able to communicate with the camera.
4
In both PixelWrench2 and SensorLink, you are required to specify the camera type prior to accessing the
camera. In PixelWrench2, on the Camera Toolbar, click the small down arrow on the top button (Status).
Select ADC as your cameratype. This loads the correct DLL for use with the ADC.
See the PixelWrench2 online helpfile for further specifics on camera communications.
USB Disk Configuration:
With the introduction of firmware version 5.097 the ADC can be configured to appear as a USB disk drive
to the operating system. To use the camera in USB disk mode simply hold the Select button down when
you power up the camera. Continue to hold the Select button until the camera display lights up. You can
now copy or download files directly from the camera CF card directly. This mode of operation is useful if
you need to transfer files from the camera onto a system that does not have the SvStream driver installed on
it.
When using the camera in USB disk mode, the PixelWrench camera toolbar commands are not available.
You can however access the CF card by simply using the File/Open command in PW2 and selecting the
drive letter representing the camera.
To revert to normal Streamdriver mode just cycle the camera power.
5
Camera Physical Layout and Interconnects
The ADC is comprised of a compact single circuit board assembly, a machined aluminum housing
incorporating a battery compartment, a lensmount and interconnection panel .
The image size is 2048 x 1536 pixels (3.2mPel) or 2560 x 1920 (5.0 mPel),both ½” optical format. The
image sensor is oriented to the same aspect as the camera housing, ie the long dimension of the sensor is in
line with the long dimension of the housing. Mounting the camera long dimension parallel to the aircraft
fuselage results in an image with the long axis parallel to the direction of flight. This allows for maximum
overlap while maintaining the maximum usable image.
All the electrical interconnections for the camera are on one endpanel. The opposite endpanel has the CF
card access door and battery door.
The interconnects provided are;
Video Out –configurable for NTSC or PAL
Trigger –Plug the optional external trigger unit into this connector.
Power –The camera requires a 12VDC, center positive polarity supply capable of delivering 0.5 Amps
continuous. The supplied wallplug type supply connects to this jack.
USB –The main USB I/O connector.
Multi I/O –This 17 pin connector is allocated to the Tetracam Videoviewer accessory. The Videoviewer
features a 6” LCD display, control buttons for triggering, menu operations and power switching. It has it’s
own power supply, input for an external supply and input for a GPS receiver.
GPS In –A mini-stereo (3 pin) connector allocated for connection of a GPS unit. The camera serial port is
configured 4800 –8 –N –1, the NMEA 0183 standard configuration. The camera firmware is designed to
listen for the NMEA RMC sentence. If found, the entire sentence is written to the image status string
(header) for extraction by application software.
CF card access –All images are written to Compact Flash cards, each camera unit carries it’s own card.
Access to the cards is through the small door next to the battery door. Cards are formatted FAT32 and can
Table of contents
