GenICam™ standard

GenICam Standard

Welcome to homepage of the GenICamTM standard. The GenICamTM standard group is hosted by the European Machine Vision Association (EMVA).

GenICamTM overview

Today's digital cameras are packed with much more functionality than just delivering an image. Processing the image and appending the results to the image data stream, controlling external hardware, and doing the real-time part of the application have become common tasks for machine vision cameras. As a result, the programming interface for cameras has become more and more complex.

The goal of GenICamTM is to provide a generic programming interface for all kinds of cameras. No matter what interface technology (GigE Vision, Camera Link, 1394 DCAM, USB, etc.) they are using or what features they are implementing, the application programming interface (API) should be always the same.

The GenICamTM standard consists of multiple modules according to the main tasks to be solved:

 

  • GenApi: configuring the camera
  • Standard Feature Naming Convention (SFNC): recommended names and types for common features
  • GenTL: transport layer interface, grabbing images

 

The GenApi and SFNC modules are currently officially part of the standard, GenTL module is ready for the approval process.

The GenICamTM group also provides GenICamTM reference implementation. The reference implementation (not part of the standard) comes with a BSD-like license and can be freely used by associated members of the GenICamTM group.