Arena SDK: Empowering Machine Vision with Advanced Camera Control and Development Tools

The Arena Software Development Kit (SDK) is a powerful, free tool designed for LUCID GigE Vision cameras. It supports a wide range of camera models, including Area Scan, Line Scan, Polarization, and 3D Time-of-Flight, across Windows, Linux, and ARM platforms. This versatile SDK provides developers with access to cutting-edge industry standards and computer technology, making it an essential tool for machine vision applications.

One of the standout features of Arena SDK is the integration of JupyterLab into ArenaView GUI. This combination transforms ArenaView from a simple camera viewer into a robust interactive development environment. Developers can now create notebook documents containing live Python code, rich text elements, and interactive visualizations. This integration allows for testing and validation of over 400 camera features without the need for a separate development environment. Users can easily process images acquired by the camera, control LUCID cameras using Python, and work with over 50 examples demonstrating various camera features.

Arena SDK offers a comprehensive API toolkit that provides access to a variety of camera feature sets. The SDK supports multiple programming languages, including C++, C, .NET, and Python, allowing developers to build and scale custom solutions quickly and easily. Key features of the API toolkit include image chunk data for meta-data on captured images, events and triggers for deterministic camera operation, and the ability to save and load streamable camera settings for efficient setup across multiple cameras.

To facilitate learning and implementation, Arena SDK provides a wealth of code examples in C++, C, C#, and Python (JupyterLab). These examples demonstrate how to use various features on LUCID devices, offering buildable and executable demonstrations of specific tasks. Each example project shows the correct parameters and sequence of calls for general use-cases, which can be easily adapted to meet specific needs. This extensive library of examples serves as an invaluable resource for developers looking to implement unique vision solutions.

ArenaView, the included GUI in Arena SDK, is a powerful tool based on the GenICam standard. It allows quick access and validation of camera features through a GenICam XML-based feature tree. Optimized for modern display resolutions, ArenaView offers improved readability and includes options for different color schemes. Key features include instant feature search, dockable panels, and advanced tools like Histogram, Line View, Pixel Peek, and Sharpness Indicator. These tools assist in various aspects of image analysis and camera setup, from identifying color balance issues to finding optimal optical sharpness.

Arena SDK includes ArenaUI, a user interface framework based on HTML 5, CSS3, and JavaScript. This modern approach to UI development allows for rapid creation of client applications with responsive designs that adapt to different screen resolutions. ArenaUI connects JavaScript UI functions to C++ backend hooks, enabling users to design interfaces using modern HTML5 frameworks while maintaining control over LUCID cameras through the Arena C++ API backend.

Arena SDK fully supports the GenICam 3 standard, providing an interface-agnostic programming standard for machine vision cameras. This compliance ensures a consistent GenICam experience, reducing the learning curve for Arena SDK. The modernized XML structure results in faster load times, reduced code size, and lower memory usage, making it ideal for embedded system operations. GenICam 3 compliance also enables faster camera enumeration and a smaller memory footprint, optimizing overall system performance.

Arena SDK comes with several additional features and utilities to enhance the development experience. These include a Lightweight Filter (LWF) driver for improved image transfer stability and performance, a Save library for simple and portable image saving, and utilities like IPConfigUtility for configuring camera IP addresses and a command-line LUCID firmware updater. The SDK also provides approximately 20 practical C++ examples that explain in detail how to use the Arena API for common tasks, such as handling device arrivals and removals or setting up overlapped trigger and exposure-end events.