Mounting and operation

•It is recommended to set the camera to standby mode if you will not be using it for a prolonged time (see is_CameraStatus()).

•The power consumption depends on the operating mode and the set focus. The camera consumes the least power on infinity focus. Additionally the JPEG compression, resolution and frame rate have an impact the camera's heat development. In the near range the autofocus needs more power. This results in an increased power requirement of the camera and thus to an increase of temperature.

•The integrated optical system is very sensitive to shock or vibration in the direction of the optical axis if the focus is not on minimum or infinity. Vibrations of the camera are transmitted to the oscillatingly mounted lens. These vibrations are visible in the image.

Focus

•To adjust the focus to your current scene, activate the one-time autofocus.

•The focus on "infinity" is not necessarily the maximum configurable value, but may be lower. Thus the focus can be adjusted via the "infinite" point.

•If you set a numerically fixed manual focus, you do not necessarily get the same result with different cameras.

•The time for focusing depends on the set pixel clock, frame rate and distance between camera and captured object.

Image processing

•We recommend to use the sharpness value -2 for image processing applications because the image data is not sharpened. The default value of 0 is recommended for visual applications.

Camera parameters

•The pixel clock can only be set to 9, 18, 30 or 35 MHz. Due to transfer in YCbCr format, two bytes of data are transferred per pixel clock.

•If the camera cannot get enough bandwidth on the USB bus, transmission errors (Transfer failed) can frequently occur. In this case reduce the pixel clock, the camera resolution or choose a USB connection that provides a better performance. Reducing the frame rate has no influence on the frequency of transmission errors.

•The camera transfers image data in raw Bayer, YCbCr  and JPEG format.

•To reduce the camera's load on the CPU, choose the Direct3D display mode and the YCbCr color format. Using the bitmap mode (DIB) or the RGB color format usually results in a higher load on the CPU.

•Set the maximum exposure limit before you enable the automatic exposure.

Black level

•Black level offset is applied before automatic exposure control and therefore affects exposure. Depending on the image content, select a lower black level offset value if necessary. If the black level offset is too high, the automatic exposure control may cause the image to turn into black.

JPEG compression

•The compression level depends on the set pixel clock, image sharpness and compression setting. The compression should be set at the end.

•The default compression value is 2. Higher values reduce the data amount but cause typical compression artifacts such as e.g. pixelating.

Additional notes on camera properties

•The camera has a built-in IR cut filter that cannot be removed. The filter blocks light with a wavelength of 650 nm and higher.

•The camera has a resolution of 5 megapixels, the default resolution is 1280 x 720 when the camera is opened.