Global provider of industrial vision components

USB3 Vision camera SDK

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Active USB is a universal USB3 Vision Driver and hardware-independent SDK designed to provide developers with a rapid access to USB3 Vision digital cameras. With ActiveUSB your application does not have to rely on a specific camera model - any USB3 Vision compliant camera will work with it out-of-the-box in any popular development environment, including C++, C#, VB.NET, Visual Basic (VB6), Delphi, PowerBuilder, Java, Matlab, Python, Ruby, OpenCV, LabView, Euresys, GE Fanuc, WinCC Flexible, Indusoft Studio, and more.

Video Acquisition

  • Acquire video from one or several USB3 Vision cameras
  • Select among multiple U3V sources
  • Use hardware and software trigger modes to acquire individual frames
  • Get an instant access to pixel values and pixel arrays in raw and interpolated frames
  • Retrieve individual color planes from color images
  • Obtain timestamp information for each individual frame
  • Retrieve chunk data appended to each image in the chunk mode

Camera Control

  • Utilize built-in multi-panel dialog for a comprehensive GUI control over available camera features
  • Set the desired video format, frame rate, exposure time, gain, black level, white balance
  • Select the desired size and position of the scan area
  • Perform programmatic control over all GenICam features exposed by connected devices
  • Control non-standard features by direct access to camera registers
  • Receive message events from U3V cameras in real time
  • Broadcast action commands to multiple devices (compatible with IEEE-1588 Time Precision Protocol
  • Save camera settings into a specified file and reload them on demand
  • Transfer data to and from files hosted on the camera

Video Display

  • Utilize our built-in video window for a high-performance live display
  • Perform automatic color interpolation of raw Bayer, JPEG and H.264 steams into RGB video
  • Use our patented anti-tearing and monitor synchronization technology to eliminate display artifacts
  • Flip, rotate, scroll and zoom live video, initiate the full screen mode
  • Choose among several palettes for pseudo-color display of monochrome and thermal images
  • Import live video into PictureBox objects
  • Overlay multi-colored graphics and text with adjustable transparency over live video

Video Recording

  • Save images into RAW, BMP, TIF, JPEG, DPX and FITS files and reload them on demand
  • Perform high-speed recording into memory sequences and play them back on demand
  • Perform real-time recording into image file series and AVI files of unlimited size
  • Adjust compression settings and time-lapse interval for video capture
  • Use our proprietary loseless codec for a 16-bit compressed AVI recording
  • Play back AVI files and memory sequences at adjustable speed, step and direction
  • Utilize our integrated web-streamer to send live video to remote mobile devices

Image Processing

  • Apply real-time running average and integration to video frames
  • Implement built-in background (dark and flat field) correction
  • Automatically identify hot pixels and eliminate them from incoming images
  • Perform real-time histogram and statistical analysis over a selected color component
  • Built-in LUT (lookup table), software brightness, contrast and WB control
  • User-defined pre- and post-processing of video frames
  • Real-time lens distortion correction (barrel and pincushion)
  • Integrated barcode decoder (UPC-A, UPC-E, EAN-8, Code 128, Code 39, Interleaved 2/5, QR Code, DataMatrix)

Add-ons

  • Configure your cameras and USB 3.0 layer settings by running UcamConfig tool
  • Evaluate the performance and functionality of your cameras with UcamViewer application
  • Reduce the CPU load and latency by utilizing an included C3 tool
  • Interface to third party imaging applications through the included TWAIN driver
  • DirectShow Video Capture (WDM) interface to third-party video-recording applications

New!

  • Cross-platform U3VAPI library compatible with Linux x86 and ARM systems.
  • Integrated web streamer/transcoder for RTSP transmission to remote devices
  • Built-in U3V to H.264 video transcoder
  • Ability to record images in the DPX format
  • Real-time lens distortion correction (barrel and pincushion
  • Substantial performance increase due to multi-core and SSE code optimization

 Ability to run multiple copies of ActiveUSB in one application guarantees independent adjustment and seamless parallel acquisition from multiple USB3 Vision cameras in both the design and run-time modes, under various 32- and 64-bit Windows platforms.


ActiveUSB setup includes extensive documentation and numerous source code samples in various programming environments demonstrating live video capture, image processing and analysis, storing acquired images in different formats, full control over camera settings, and many more.


Excellent performance, industry-proven robustness, broad functionality, flexible licensing options and diligent technical support make ActiveUSB one of the best camera SDKs in its class.

"I cannot get over how quickly I've been able to create a real-time image processing app in C# and how efficiently it is running. This is really awesome!"

JP Curzan,
Cyan Systems

"I could not get the camera manufacturer's SDK to work in my development environment. I tried your SDK and it worked very well. I also like the idea that with your ActiveUSB my software will not be dependent on a particular camera hardware."

Tom Zamojdo,
Making Virtual Solid

"I have been working with ActiveUSB SDK for two years now having reached despair with a camera brand API. So rich is ActiveUSB feature set I'm still finding new functions with which to enhance my application!"

Frank Vine,
Winchmore Technology, UK