Cannot detect Point Grey BlackFly S camera (Teledyne/FLIR cameras)

Python
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1

I am trying to use a Point Grey BlackFly S camera (BFS U3 13y3m) with a computer vision project developed using openCV. While I can stream video through the project fine using a cheap USB webcam, I am unable to stream video from, detect, or capture from the BlackFly camera, despite the fact that it is also USB3 connected.

The project is DeepLabStream for anyone interested, and I am in a conda environment running Python 3.6, with opencv-contrib-python 4.5.2.54, opencv-python 4.5.2.54 and opencv-python-headless 4.2.0.34.

I know that Point Grey uses a proprietary API, so I also have Spinnaker-Python 3.2.0.62 for Python 3.6 installed in this environment and the whole Spinnaker SDK 3.2 installed in the computer. I am able to use the provided Spinnaker .py files to take images using the camera but still unable to get openCV to recognize it. What else do I need to get openCV able to recognize this camera?

Thanks so much!

2

that means very little.

there is “USB3 Vision”, which is different from USB Unified Video Class.

OpenCV supports some other APIs. you could try the XIMEA backend. that might just be USB3 Vision with a rebranding.

you should use the manufacturer’s drivers instead, from your own code.

that Spinnaker thing you mentioned cannot “enable” OpenCV to access those cameras. OpenCV cannot be aware of what other libraries you use. software doesn’t work like that. there is no shared API between those things.

3

As you may have guessed, I’m not a programmer, I’m a biologist. I don’t know how software works! :slight_smile:

I’ll give that backend a shot. Not sure what you mean by using the manufacturer’s drivers from my own code, though.

4

you can probably just use that Spinnaker library. it’ll probably give you numpy arrays, just like OpenCV would.