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Component Selector#

The Component Selector feature allows you to select the components that the camera transmits.

Basler blaze cameras generate a frame-based data stream. Each frame consists of one or multiple components. For each individual component you can select a pixel format to control how the component's data is represented.

Components#

The following components are available:

  • Range
    When enabling the Range component, each frame contains depth information. Using the PixelFormat parameter you can control whether the depth information is represented as a depth map or as a point cloud. A depth map uses gray values to represent the distance between the target and the camera per pixel. The depth map output by the blaze camera uses gray values to represent the distance between the target and the image plane (an imaginary plane that passes through the optical center of the camera and is parallel to the sensor). A point cloud is a set of 3D coordinates. In a point cloud, each pixel is assigned (x,y,z) coordinates in the camera's coordinate system.
  • Intensity
    When enabling the Intensity component, an intensity image is added to each data frame the camera generates. The intensity image shows the brightness of the reflected light pulses as 16-bit integer values per pixel. Technically speaking, this is an amplitude image as it only contains the near-infrared portion of the light while any ambient light is filtered out.
    Because the wavelength of the light sent out by the camera has an influence on this, the intensity image may differ from the human perception of the target scene.
    The intensity image is useful for checking the image for over-/undersaturated pixels. To avoid these, try changing the exposure time or the camera position and check whether the image improves.
  • Confidence
    When enabling the Confidence component, a confidence map is added to each data frame the camera generates. The confidence map is a visual representation of how reliable the depth map data is. The more light is collected for a pixel, the higher the confidence value. If no reliable depth data is available, a pixel is set to zero in the confidence map.
    Using the ConfidenceThreshold parameter, you can control which depth data is considered reliable.

Selecting a Component#

You can choose which component you want the camera to transmit by enabling the respective component using the ComponentSelector parameter.

To enable a component:

  1. Set the ComponentSelector parameter to the desired component:

    • Range: The Range component will be selected.
    • Intensity: The Intensity component will be selected.
    • Confidence: The Confidence component will be selected.

  2. Set the ComponentEnable parameter to true.

  3. Set the PixelFormat parameter to the desired pixel format for the component.
  4. Repeat for other components if required.