Camera List

All cameras found within the network are listed with their serial numbers. If a camera is missing, try to re-initialize the list (see below). Secondly, check the connection to it, e.g. restart your switch. NaturalPoint offers a tool called "Camera Tester", you can also find it (under the name "visualtest.exe") in the installation folder of Widget Designer. If you have problems connecting the Widget Designer to the cameras, try to connect to them using the tool to see whether the problem lies in the physical connection or not.

 
The selection of a single camera or "All Cameras" affects many settings, e.g. the "Frame Rate". Keep in mind, that "All Cameras" overwrites a change to all cameras, even if they were set up individually per camera before"

Re-Acquire Cameras

This button tries to (re-)connect to all available cameras (and removes obsolete cameras). All settings like "Exposure" are kept.

Active

This check box toggles the camera active or inactive.
An inactive camera does not contribute its view to the calculation of the tag's position anymore. This can be helpful during setup to find out how "good" a camera matches with other cameras. If a tag jumps far when toggling a camera, it is not setup well. Another necessity for deactivating a camera might be when the connection suddenly became bad or if it's position has changed by accident or something else happened that disturbs the tracking calculation.

IR Filter

This check box influences what light is seen by the camera - only infrared light with a ticked check box or additional visible light if not ticked. You might want to deactivate the filter during setup (e.g. camera position, focus,...) in order to see a camera image containing more information.

Camera Type

This informs about the camera type when a camera is selected from the list, e.g. "V100:R2".

Frame Rate

The frame rate determines how many images are takes per second. For instance, "250" means that 250 images are taken and send per second. In other words one image has a time frame of 1/250 of a second = 0.004 sec = 4 ms = 4000 µs
You may lower the frame rate to save performance. You must not exceed the highest frame rate supported by your camera.

Exposure

The Exposure determines how many microseconds (1µs = 1/1 000 000 of a second = 0.000001 sec) the lens shutter is open for light to pass through it and expose the image. The longer that is, the brighter the image gets, meaning that dark areas will be not black any more but dark-gray whilst light-gray areas will become white. Every pixel that is not black is later on examined to be a potential tag.
Hence, adjust the time as short as possible to still see the tag's light but nothing else. Before increasing it, lower the threshold first. Exposure and threshold are engaged to each other! Also, you could increase the brightness of a tag or set up a mask.
Note that the exposure time depends on the frame rate and should not be longer than one frame itself.

Threshold

The effect of the threshold is only seen in camera mode "Segment" or "Tracking" as it works "after" the grayscale image. It sets the minimum brightness a pixel from the grayscale image must have in order to be considered as a valid pixel. Valid pixels are displayed in the segment mode as pink pixels and are potential tags.
The value range is 0-255. In contrary to the exposure, which should be set to a minimum level, the threshold should be set to a maximum level. The higher the threshold is, the brighter a pixel in the grayscale needs to be in order to be handed over into the segment mode, hence to be examined to be a tag. The less pink pixels you see, the less calculation needs to be done.
In short, adjust the exposure as low as possible and the threshold as high as possible to still see the tag's light but nothing else. If you need a brighter image, it is better in regards to the performance, to adjust the threshold than the exposure.

ID and LED

If the LED check box is activated, the camera will show the set up ID. This is useful during setup. For show use, you might not want to see the ID. If you untick the check box, the ID itself stays unchanged for later use You may setup a maximum ID of 99.

IR Lights

The cameras are equipped with infrared LEDs themself as they can be used in tracking scenarios with passive (i.e. reflecting) markers. As our tag is an active marker, you won't need to illuminate it. However during setup (with an activated "IR Filter") it might be useful from time to time to illuminate the scene. A value of 0 turns the LEDs completely off whilst 15 results in the maximum brightness.

Mask

With an activated mask, certain areas of the camera's image are blocked. A mask can be set up from the user interface itself (see "Block Visible") or prepared with another image software (see "Load Mask" and "Save Frame")
This way you can eliminate areas with reflections or other light noise from the tracking calculation.
You may see a mask overlay in the preview mode "Grayscale" and "Segment", not in "Tracking".

Show Crosshair

Block Visible

This option works only in the camera mode "Segment". It creates a mask. All visible pixels seen in the segment preview are used for the mask and are blocked in consequence. For instance, turn off all tags so that you are sure to block only external light and then press the button.  Tick the "Mask" check box to see the blocked pixels as a blue overlay.

Clear Mask

This option clears a mask if you have used the "Block Visible" or "Load Mask" before. If you do not need a mask anymore it is recommended to clear it as well as deactivate it.

Load Mask...

Click this button if you wish to load a mask that you have prepared with a third-party image software. All black areas in the mask, hide the according pixels in the camera's image whilst visible pixels let them pass through. It does not matter whether you use white pixels, or any color, as long as it is not pure black.
Supported file formats are: BMP, PNG, JPG, GIF
Please make sure, that the resolution of the mask matches the full resolution of the camera you are using, e.g. 1280 x 1024 for the Prime13.

Save Frame...

This option saves the current frame of the selected camera that is seen in the preview. It is possible to save a frame from the Camera modes: Grayscale, Segment and Tracking. If you have ticked the "Mask" check box, the mask will not be shown as black pixels.
Saving a frame is useful to prepare a mask or to document light ratio, e.g. how much light there was during rehearsals.

Highprecision Filtering

This option is needed in order to enable camera pre-filtering of detected segments above threshold, a higher threshold might be chosen for this mode.