Introduction:

FrameGrab is a stand-alone application for user to Display/Save images from an Aptina demo kit.  It is a low level tool used when trying to bring up or debug a camera.  Unlike DevWare there are no assumptions made about the sensor settings.  The user is responsible for inputting all data needed to understand the image format.  The user needs to input image size, format, clock per pixel and bits per pixel. Figure 1 shows the FramsGrab.exe GUI.

Figure 1. FrameGrab GUI.

Tool Features:

• Grab a frame from a USB 2.0/3.0 Aptina demo kit, which can be viewed, dumped and saved.
• No initialization or detection of the sensor is needed, although you have the option of initializing the data from the INI demo initialization settings
• Outputs bytes requested and returned and the frame count on the status bar.
  
• User control over the following:
• Width
• Height
• Clocks/pixel
• Bits/Clock
• Pixel Polarity
• Marker on/off (marker requires SHIP address and registers for row size and col size)
• Display - Bayer interpolated, YCbCr interpolated, RGB565, raw
• YCbCr component offsets
• Show all frames or only good frames
• Outputs return code from the frame grab (MI_SUCCESS etc.) and frame # returned on the status bar.  
• Dump raw data, (including the extra packet) to a text buffer. Includes search function
• Save raw data, 24 bit BMP and a text description of the raw data
• State is saved to .ini file during every session

User Interface:

Image Settings:

• Width - Must be greater than zero
• Height - Must be greater than zero
• Clk/Pix - Typically 1 for 8/10 bit grabs and 2 for 16 bit grabs
• Bits/Clk - Typically 8/10
• Polarity - 0 for negative, 1 for positive

Display Settings - These settings apply to the display of the current frame

• [All/Good] - Display all frames/Display only good frames, (up to a max of 10 tries)
• YCbCr ordering - Default order is CbY0CrY1, Enter new offsets to reorder the components.

Buttons:

• Grab - Attempt a frame grab given the Buffer, Marker and Bug fix settings.
• Dump - hexadecimal dump of raw data, including the extra packet. Disabled if no grabbed buffer
• 
• Save - raw, 24 bit BMP and text file are saved in "capture" folder. Disabled if no grabbed buffer

Marker settings:

Markers are used to deliniate the end of frame in the standard image capture from an Aptina demo kit.  These 

• Use marker - If clicked, the marker will be used and the buffer size will be calculated based on the row and col size register settings
• SHIP - required to set the row size and column size registers
• Row Reg - row size register
• Col Reg - column size register

Tool Usage:

1. Hook up an Aptina demo kit via USB 2.0/3.0 port.
2. Launch FrameGrab.exe

3. Determine whether to initialize the camera (from the Demo Initialization settings in the INI file).

1. Set the appropriate width, height, clocks/pixel, bits/clock, and pixel polarity
2.   Set the desired display output

5. Click Grab
6. Click "Save" to save the raw data, 24 bit BMP and text description

If there are errors: 

• Try clicking "Grab" until a successful frame is returned
• Change the width and height parameters and grab another frame
• Experiment with clocks/pixel and bits/clock and grab another frame
• Change the polarity to either 0 or 1
• Experiment with the display output
• Apply one or more of the bug fixes and grab another frame
• Click "Dump" to look at the data via hex dump to see if it is valid
• Use the search
• Check register settings via RegPoke (separate tool) and/or reset the device