HALCON

Introduction

For more information about HALCON by MVtec, we refer to the product owner´s online presence: https://www.mvtec.com/products/halcon/

HALCON can be pre-installed on the camera via /opt/halcon and can be acceses via the path variable $HALCONROOT, please contact our sales.

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HALCON for ARM-based Platforms

The offical MVTec document "HALCON for ARM-based Platforms" describes the process of "compiling/cross-compiling" of HALCON applications and is linked below.

https://www.mvtec.com/fileadmin/Redaktion/mvtec.com/documentation/manuals/arm_based_platforms.pdf

The document is divided into chapters. For a better orientation we give a short overview:

Chapter 1 Using HALCON on ARM-based Platforms

Gives a general overview of using HALCON on ARM-based Platforms.

Chapter 2 Getting Started

Discribes the process of installing HALCON to an ARM-based Platform and can be skipped since the HALCON tools are pre-installed both on iam and the virtual machine.

Chapter 3 Creating Applications

Describes the process of "compiling/cross-compiling" of an HALCON application.

HALCON Examples on iam

Open an SSH Shell connection to the camera. In some cases X-Server support is required.

ssh -Y root@192.168.1.10

There are some examples pre-installed to iam. They can be found here:

cd /home/root/040530_test_halcon

On top of the file system see for README.md.

There is detailed information about the provided samples.

Structure of the test_HALCON folder:

The folder contains the file system below. The three examples have a similar file structure.

.
|-- README.md			
|-- cpp
|   |-- Makefile
|   |-- test_halcon_aniso_test
|   |   |-- bin
|   |   |   |-- aarch64-linux
|   |   |       |-- find_aniso_shape_model
|   |   |-- makefiles
|   |   |   |-- macros.mak
|   |   |   |-- makefile
|   |   |   |-- rules.mak
|   |   |-- source
|   |   |   |-- find_aniso_shape_model.cpp
|   |   |-- vs2010
|   |       |-- test_halcon_aniso.sln
|   |       |-- test_halcon_aniso.suo
|   |       |-- test_halcon_aniso.vcxproj
|   |       |-- test_halcon_aniso.vcxproj.filters
|   |       |-- test_halcon_aniso.vcxproj.user
|   |       |-- x64
|   |           |-- Release
|   |               |-- test_halcon_aniso.exe
|   |-- test_halcon_live_view
|   |   |-- bin
|   |   |   |-- aarch64-linux
|   |   |       |-- test_halcon_live_view
|   |   |-- makefiles
|   |   |   |-- macros.mak
|   |   |   |-- makefile
|   |   |   |-- rules.mak
|   |   |-- source
|   |   |   |-- test_halcon_live_view.cpp
|   |   |-- vs2010
|   |       |-- test_halcon_live_view.sln
|   |       |-- test_halcon_live_view.suo
|   |       |-- test_halcon_live_view.vcxproj
|   |       |-- test_halcon_live_view.vcxproj.filters
|   |       |-- test_halcon_live_view.vcxproj.user
|   |       |-- x64
|   |           |-- Release
|   |               |-- test_halcon_live_view.exe
|   |-- /test_halcon_sw_trigger
|       |-- bin
|       |   |-- aarch64-linux
|       |       |-- test_halcon_sw_trigger
|       |-- makefiles
|       |   |-- macros.mak
|       |   |-- makefile
|       |   |-- rules.mak
|       |-- source
|       |   |-- test_halcon_sw_trigger.cpp
|       |-- vs2010
|           |-- test_halcon_sw_trigger.sln
|           |-- test_halcon_sw_trigger.suo
|           |-- test_halcon_sw_trigger.vcxproj
|           |-- test_halcon_sw_trigger.vcxproj.filters
|           |-- test_halcon_sw_trigger.vcxproj.user
|           |-- x64
|               |-- Release
|                   |-- test_halcon_sw_trigger.exe
|-- profile_halcon

Description of samples:

test_halcon_aniso_test:

This sample is derived from find_aniso_shape_model.hdev (MVTec Software GmbH).
This sample is designed for testing the performance of the FindAnisoShapeModel() function.
With 50 loops a mean value of the consumed time of FindAnisoShapeModel() is evaluated.

OPTIONS:

NO_WINDOWS ; if defined no windows are shown

test_halcon_live_view:

This sample is derived from error_handling_timeout.cpp (MVTec Software GmbH).
This sample is designed for testing the live view of the iam platform.

OPTIONS:

SAVE_IMAGE ; if defined, a image is saved at the end of program
SET_EXPOSURE_TIME ; if defined, a exposure time is set

test_halcon_sw_trigger:

This sample is derived from error_handling_timeout.cpp (MVTec Software GmbH).
This sample is designed to show the software trigger functionality.
This sample aquires 100 software triggered frames.
No live view is implemented.

OPTIONS:

NONE

Execution of one of the provided HALCON examples

The binaries of the prebuild examples can be found in the ../bin directory of each example project. The test_halcon_live_view can be executed applying the commands below. The other two examples can be executed in the same way.

cd /home/root/040530_test_halcon/cpp/test_halcon_live_view/bin/aarch64-linux/
./test_halcon_live_view

The test_halcon_live_view example opens a figure showing the camera live image. Therefore it is necessary that the OpenSSH connection allows x11 forwarding!

The two other examples test_halcon_aniso_test and test_halcon_sw_trigger do not need x11 forwarding.

Compiling the provided HALCON examples

It is possible to compile the examples on a Linux Host system (e.g. by using the provided virtual machine image) or native on the camera (over OpenSSH) both using makefiles.

For cross compiling, source profile_halcon:
source .profile_halcon

Test successful sourcing with:
echo $HALCONARCH

See then for:
aarch64-linux

The next section describes the process of building the software trigger project as an example.

Build e.g. the software trigger example

The steps described below are similar in the native and the cross compile environment.

Navigate into the makefile directory

cd /home/root/040530_test_halcon/cpp/test_halcon_sw_trigger/makefiles

Remove the prebuild binary by executing the command make make clean and build it from source by make .

For more details: The exact behaviour of both commands is defined in the makefile.

make clean
make

The compiled binary can be found in the ../bin directory and can be executed as follow

cd ../bin/aarch64-linux/
./test_halcon_sw_trigger

The other examples test_halcon_live_view and test_halcon_aniso_test or your own project as described in the next section can be build from the source accordingly.

Building your own HALCON examples:

Prepare Makefiles

Possibly the easiest way is to copy the complete folder of one of the examples and rename it to your project name:

cd /home/root/040530_test_halcon/cpp/
mkdir your_project_name
cp -vr test_halcon_sw_trigger/* your_project_name

Now edit and rename the given source file from the director your_project_name/source/ or simply replace it by your own cpp file.

On will get a well-arranged file structure if you use the make clean command before further editing your project director. On can achive this by executing the commands below.

cd /home/root/040530_test_halcon/cpp/your_project_name/makefiles/
make clean

cd /home/root/040530_test_halcon/cpp/your_project_name/source/
mv test_halcon_sw_trigger.cpp your_source_file_name.cpp

For analysis of a monochrome image sensor it is important to use a monochrome pixel fomat. Therefore the given examples do all show how to configure the pixel format in source code. With reference to test_halcon_sw_trigger.cpp:

try
{
	acqdevice.SetFramegrabberParam("PixelFormat", "Mono8");
}
catch (HException &except)
{
	cout << "---> PixelFormat failed!\n";
	cout << "---> Cause: " << except.ErrorMessage() << "(HALCON error " << except.ErrorCode() << ")\n";
	cout << "---> CloseFramegrabber!\n";
	acqdevice.CloseFramegrabber();
	return except.ErrorCode();
}

Edit the makefile as shown below in line 38 with regard to the naming of your cpp source file.

#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# makefile
#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# HALCON/C++ examples
#
# ATTENTION:
#
#   This makefile uses gmake syntax and works only with gmake, therefore.
#   On Windows systems you can use nmake with the file makefile.win 
#   which is also provided in this directory
#   The executables are created in the directory 
#   $(HALCONEXAMPLES)/cpp/console/bin$(CONF_SUFFIX)/$(HALCONARCH)
#
# Copyright (c) 1996-2019 by MVTec Software GmbH
#                            www.mvtec.com
#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# The makefile can be used in the following way:
#    gmake all
#    gmake all XL=1
#    gmake allxl
#    gmake clean
#    gmake <program>
#    gmake <program> XL=1
#    gmake PROG=<program>
#    gmake PROG=<program> XL=1
#    gmake PROG=<program> clean
# Optionally the STATE variable can be set to release or debug, e.g.
#    gmake STATE=debug all
#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#
#  Make sure that the following environment variables are set correctly:
#    - HALCONROOT
#    - HALCONARCH 
#------------------------------------------------------------------------------

# -- common stuff -------------------------------------------------------------

PROG           = your_source_file_name

ifndef BASE_DIR
BASE_DIR       = ../
endif
ifndef MAKE_DIR
MAKE_DIR       = $(BASE_DIR)makefiles/
endif
ifndef MAKE_FILE
MAKE_FILE      = makefile
endif

ifndef SRC_DIR
SRC_DIR        = $(BASE_DIR)source/
endif

Using make command

Navigate into the makefile directory and execute the make command.

cd /home/root/040530_test_halcon/cpp/your_project_name/makefiles
make

You may need to remove your binaries which were built before when executing the command make clean.

The binary can be found now in the ../bin directory and can be executed by the commands below.

cd ../bin/aarch64-linux/
./your_source_file_name

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