THORLABS DC210 User manual

DC210, DC310
Firewire CCD Camera
ThorSight Image Acquisition
Software
Manual

Firewire CCD Camera
13141-D02 Rev B, March 1, 2010 Page 2 www.thorlabs.com
Table of Contents
Part 1. Thor Sight Software Guide..........................................................................................................4
1.1. Image Capture..........................................................................................................................................4
1.2. Saving Individual Images........................................................................................................................6
File Types: ................................................................................................................................................................. 6
1.3. Recording a Movie Clip to an AVI File..................................................................................................7
1.4. Camera Control Dialog Functions..........................................................................................................7
General Camera Properties ........................................................................................................................................8
Format and Frame Rate............................................................................................................................................10
Custom Image.......................................................................................................................................................... 11
Info/Support............................................................................................................................................................. 12
Register ....................................................................................................................................................................13
Trigger ..................................................................................................................................................................... 14
White Balance.......................................................................................................................................................... 15
Color Processing ......................................................................................................................................................15
1.5. About Thor Sight....................................................................................................................................17
1.6. External Trigger Setup..........................................................................................................................17
Part 2. DC210 Technical Reference......................................................................................................18
2.1. General Specifications ...........................................................................................................................18
2.2. Camera Power........................................................................................................................................18
2.3. Typical Spectral Response.....................................................................................................................19
2.4. Infrared Cut-Off Filters ........................................................................................................................20
2.5. Analog to Digital Converter..................................................................................................................21
Part 3. Camera Operation and Features...............................................................................................22
3.1. Gain and Shutter Settings .....................................................................................................................22
Gain.......................................................................................................................................................................... 22
Shutter......................................................................................................................................................................22
Extended Shutter...................................................................................................................................................... 23
3.2. Camera Interface ...................................................................................................................................24
General Purpose IO.................................................................................................................................................. 24
IEEE-1394 Connector.............................................................................................................................................. 24
3.3. Automatic Inter-Camera Synchronization..........................................................................................25
3.4. Supported Data Formats and Modes ...................................................................................................25
Standard Formats, Modes and Frame Rates............................................................................................................. 25
Customizable Formats and Modes........................................................................................................................... 25
Image Data Formats................................................................................................................................................. 26
Mechanical Specifications .......................................................................................................................................27
Part 4. Regulatory ..................................................................................................................................28
Part 5. Thorlabs, Inc Worldwide Contacts............................................................................................29

Firewire CCD Camera
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Table of Figures
Figure 1: Select Camera Dialog Box..................................................................................................... 4
Figure 2: Thor Sight Main Screen and Tool Bar................................................................................... 5
Figure 3: Image from a DC210 ............................................................................................................. 6
Figure 4: General Camera Properties Tab............................................................................................. 9
Figure 5: Format and Frame Rate Tab ................................................................................................ 10
Figure 6: Custom Image Tab............................................................................................................... 11
Figure 7: Info/Support Tab.................................................................................................................. 13
Figure 8: Register Tab ......................................................................................................................... 14
Figure 9: White Balance Tab............................................................................................................... 15
Figure 10: Color Processing Tab........................................................................................................... 16
Figure 11: Thor Sight About Dialog Box.............................................................................................. 17
Figure 12: Thor Sight External Trigger Parameters Dialog Box .......................................................... 17
Figure 13: Spectral Response for DC210.............................................................................................. 19
Figure 14: Spectral Response for DC210C ........................................................................................... 19
Figure 15: Spectral Response for DC310.............................................................................................. 20
Figure 16: IEEE 1394 Connector .......................................................................................................... 25
Figure 17: Mechanical Drawing of the DCx10 Housing....................................................................... 27

Firewire CCD Camera
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Part 1. Thor Sight Software Guide
The Thor Sight application is a streaming image viewer used to interface with your DC210/DC310
camera. It allows you to view a live video stream from the camera, save individual images, save AVI
movie clips, trigger the camera to capture trigger-generated images, adjust camera settings, select
different frame rates, and access the camera registers.
1.1. Image Capture
Launch the Thor Sight executable from the desktop icon. The Select Camera dialog box (Figure 1) will
appear.
Figure 1: Select Camera Dialog Box
From the list of cameras, choose the one that you wish to use for image capture. Once the camera is
selected, click the “OK” button, and the main Thor Sight application window will open. If you wish to
change the camera that is being displayed, access the camera dialog box by clicking on the Camera
Dialog icon ( ), which is the leftmost icon on the toolbar.

Firewire CCD Camera
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Figure 2: Thor Sight Main Screen and Tool Bar
To start capturing images, click the Stop Light icon ( ) on the toolbar. The video will be displayed in
the main Thor Sight window with the frame rate and timing information displayed in the lower status
bar.
To stop the image capture, click the Stop Light icon ( ) again. Alternatively, you can also click the Stop
Sign icon ( ).
Trigger Logo Icon – External Trigger Setup
Thorlabs Logo Icon – Information about ThorSight
AVI Camera Icon – Creates an *.avi Movie Clip
Stop Light Icon – Stat and Stop Video Capture
Stop Sign Icon – Stops the Video Capture
Camera Property List Icon – Access Camera Controls
Save Icon – Saves a single Video Image
Camera Dialog Icon– Switch to a Different Camera

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Figure 3: Image from a DC210
1.2. Saving Individual Images
To save a single video frame, click the Save icon ( ) on the toolbar. A save file dialog box will appear,
enabling you to save the image.
File Types:
1. Portable Pixelmap (*.ppm). PPM is a simple color image file format that can store pixel values
up to 24 bits in size. These images can be viewed and edited using Paint Shop Pro from Jasc
Software.
2. Bitmap (*.bmp). BMP are an extremely popular format for Windows. BMP images can range
from black and white (1 byte per pixel) up to 24 bit color (16.7 million colors), and can be
viewed by most image viewers especially Microsoft Paint.
3. Portable Gray Map (*.pgm). PGM format is a simple grayscale file format. It is designed to be
extremely easy to learn and write programs for, and is capable of storing 16 bit images. Paint

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Shop Pro from Jasc Software is a good image editor that can open and display .pgm images. The
Linux application XV is the only application know to handle 16 bit images.
4. Raw (*.raw). Raw image files contain no header or footer information, and are the basic raw
data (pixel values) represented by the image.
1.3. Recording a Movie Clip to an AVI File
Thor Sight allows you to save a specified number of images as an Audio Video Interleave (.avi) movie
clip. To access this functionality, stop the camera then click the AVI Camera icon ( ) on the toolbar. A
dialog box similar to the one below will appear:
•The Frames field is the number of images that will make up the AVI. Each image is allocated its
own buffer in main memory which will limit the number of frames that can be specified.
•The Frame rate override controls the playback rate of the AVI. If this is left as 0, the playback
rate defaults to the image grab rate of the camera (i.e. 30 Hz). This is useful for creating slow
motion video.
•The Path field specifies the directory path and filename of the saved AVI file. The default
directory and filename is: C:\Thorsight\thorsight.avi.
1.4. Camera Control Dialog Functions
The Camera Control dialog box allows you to manipulate most camera properties, check camera
information and allows you to directly access camera hardware registers to get and set specific register
values.
To access the Camera Control dialog click the Camera Property List icon ( ) on the toolbar. Some of
the controls in the camera dialog box may be grayed out. This means that the camera being used does
not support that functionality. There are eight register tabs on the camera control dialog. Each tab will be
discussed below.

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General Camera Properties
Property Description
Brightness (%) This is the level of black in an image. A high brightness will result in a low amount of
blackness in the image.
Saturation This is how far a color is from a gray image of the same intensity, i.e. red is highly saturated,
where as a pale pink is not.
Exposure (EV) This is the average intensity of the image. It will use other available (non-manually adjustable)
controls to adjust the image. Specifically, when shutter and gain are both in auto mode,
manually adjusting the exposure slider control is actually adjusting the auto-exposure, which
tries to make the average intensity of the image ¼ of the auto exposure value, i.e. exposure is
400, the camera will try to adjust shutter and gain so that the average image intensity is 100.
When the auto checkbox is checked for exposure, auto-exposure is enabled, which tries to
manipulate shutter and gain such that a percentage of the image is saturated, i.e. pixel value of
255.
Gain (dB) The amount of amplification that is applied to a pixel. An increase in gain can result in a
brighter image and an increase in noise.
Gamma Gamma defines the function between incoming light level and output picture level. Gamma
can also be useful in emphasizing details in the darkest and/or brightest regions of the image.
Sharpness This works by filtering the image to reduce blurred edges in an image.
Shutter (ms) This is the amount of time that the camera shutter stays open for; also know as the integration
time.
Frame Rate This is the speed at which the camera is streaming images to the host system. It basically
defines the interval between consecutive image transfers.

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Figure 4: General Camera Properties Tab
Some general properties will have an Auto Mode in which the camera will automatically make property
adjustments to get the best image possible (given the environment and lighting conditions). Some
properties can also be turned On/Off, effectively disabling the property control. The One Push button is
another automatic control mode, but the camera only performs automatic control of the feature for a
specific period of time. After this time, automatic setting adjustment stops and manual control is given
back to the user.
General camera property values can be displayed in either absolute mode or integer mode. Absolute
values are real world values, such milliseconds (ms), decibels (dB) or percent (%). Using the absolute
values is easier and more efficient than applying complex conversion formulas to the integer values. In
addition, these conversion formulas can change between firmware versions, Thorlabs therefore
recommends using the absolute values to determine camera values.
The Broadcast Modifications checkbox allows you to broadcast the current camera’s settings to other
cameras of the same type that are on the same 1394 bus. Checking this and making a change to your
current DCx10’s gain settings will cause other DCx10s on the same Fire Wire bus to have the same gain
settings. Clicking the Broadcast Properties button causes all current camera settings to be sent one time
only to all compatible cameras on the Fire Wire bus.

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Thor Sight also provides the ability to save and restore all general camera properties to and from the
system registry using the Save and Restore buttons. The specific location these settings are saved to is:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Thorlabs, Inc.\Camera Settings\
Relevant Camera Registers:
Control and Status Registers for Features: 800h->83Ch
Format and Frame Rate
On the Format and Frame Rate tab you can change the resolution (horizontal and vertical pixel
dimensions), image format (i.e. Y8, RGB, YUV422, etc.) and frame rate (number of frames of
transmitted per second) of the camera. Different cameras may have different formats and frame rates
implemented; modes that are not implemented are grayed out. These modes conform to IEEE-1394
Digital Camera specifications.
Figure 5: Format and Frame Rate Tab
Relevant Camera Registers
Control and Status Registers for Features: 600h->630h