Ah, I feel your frustration — industrial cameras can definitely be tricky to get working with libraries like EmguCV, especially when they rely on special SDKs or drivers. Let’s break it down and see how we can get things moving.
EmguCV (just like OpenCV, which it's based on) uses standard interfaces (like DirectShow on Windows, or V4L on Linux) to access cameras. So if your industrial camera:
Requires a proprietary SDK, or
Doesn't expose a DirectShow interface,
then EmguCV won’t be able to see or use it via the usual Capture or VideoCapture class.
Does your camera show up in regular webcam apps?
If it doesn’t show up in apps like Windows Camera or OBS, then it’s not available via DirectShow — meaning EmguCV can’t access it natively.
Check EmguCV camera index or path
If the camera does appear in regular apps, you can try:
csharp
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var capture = new VideoCapture(0); // Try index 1, 2, etc.
But again, if your camera uses its own SDK (like Basler’s Pylon, IDS, Daheng SDK, etc.), this won’t work.
Most industrial cameras provide their own .NET-compatible SDKs. Use that SDK to grab frames, then feed those images into EmguCV like so:
csharp
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// Assume you get a Bitmap or raw buffer from the SDKBitmap bitmap = GetFrameFromCameraSDK(); // Convert to EmguCV Mat Mat mat = bitmap.ToMat(); // or use CvInvoke.Imread if saving to disk temporarily // Now use EmguCV functions on mat
You’ll basically use the vendor SDK to acquire, and EmguCV to process.
If you're feeling ambitious and want to keep using EmguCV’s patterns, you could extend Capture or create a custom class to wrap your camera SDK, but that’s quite involved.
EmguCV doesn’t natively support cameras that require special SDKs.
Most industrial cameras do require their own SDKs to function.
Your best bet: Use the SDK to get frames, then convert those into Mat or Image<Bgr, Byte> for processing.