TECHNICAL SUMMARY

The GenICam standard defines a generic camera programming interface that allows a single application programming interface (API) to control any compliant camera, regardless of its vendor, interface technology, or feature set. Managed by the European Machine Vision Association, GenICam consists of four modules:

• GenApi - This module defines the format of an extensible mark-up language (XML) file that captures the features of a device. GenApi also specifies how to access and control the features. All GenICam-compliant devices must contain an XML file that conforms to this format.
• Standard Features Naming Convention - This module standardizes the names of more than 220 commonly used camera features. To comply with GigE Vision, seven of the features are mandatory. The rest are either recommended or optional. Compliance with the naming convention is important for interoperability, as it frees applications software from the complexity of situations where vendors call the same feature by different names, for example, 'Brightness' and 'Briteness.'
• GenTL - This module defines a software interface for accessing image data. It specifies a generic transport layer interface that governs how software libraries retieve image data from software transport layers of framegrabbers.
• CLProtocol - This module allows cameras that comply with the Camera Link^® standard to be accessed through GenApi. It defines the interfaces of a platform-dependent dynamic-link library that converts a vendor-specific Camera Link serial protocol interface to a GenApi interface. The module will be released with Version 2.1.

There are two levels of compliance to GenICam:

• "GenICam-compliance," where a product either provides or interprets a compliant XML file, but doesn't produce a GenTL interface; and
• "GenICam TL-compliance," where a product produces a transport layer compatible with GenTL.

For more information, visit GenICam.org.