FireWire cameras in Linux

Neither AVT nor Basler offer FireWire support in their official SDKs. (Both companies were asked in August 2016)

There is an open source project about contorling FireWire cameras in Linux:
Coriander project
https://ieee1394.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Libraries
https://sourceforge.net/projects/libdc1394/

Coriander has been sucessfully compiled and run on sdlx029 running CentOS7. The executable also run on a frontend after installing gnome libraries. I could run two cameras in parallel, a Basler A311f and a AVT Marlin F033b.

Issues:

• So far, only one specific FireWire card worked well with Linux (see below). None of the PCI express or other PCI cards I tested was recognised. OnBoad FireWire ports also were not recognised.

• I tested two of these FireWire cards and one of them had the problem, that only cameras connected to one port were recognised. Nothing happened when I plugged them in the other port. The card is currently in sdlx029.
• The Coriander software sometimes hangs or doesn't find the cameras
• “Extracting” the camera code out of Coriander is NOT EASY!

Conclusion: In principle it is possible to read out FireWire cameras in Linux. Programming a FESA class for this is not trivial. E.g. all image transformation functions (mirror, rotate, histogram, projections, …) have to be programmed by oneself (or a suitable library). In the original BIF setup, this is done by LabView. We wait for a decision, if/which Unilac systems HAVE to be transferred to the new control system for the coming beam time.