FAQ Category: General

General questions about BitFlow.

Can you explain the colors of the TriLED on the CXP boards?

Each CoaXPress board has one Tri LED per link. Tri LED1 refers to VFG0, Tri LED2 refers to VFG1 etc. Typically all boards flash together if one camera is connected.

Note the following color/flash rate meanings

Blinking Red – Problem with the PCIe interface
Blinking Blue – Looking for a link to see if it needs power
Solid Blue – Link is powered, but not aligned
Blinking Green – Link is aligned and receiving packets
Solid Green – Link is aligned

Using BFCom, what baud rates are supported by the Neon

The Neon supports up to 256 kb . You can modify the baud rate in BFCom via the File > Com properties menu command.

The command to make the same change in the camera depends on the camera protocol. It’s different for every make of camera. You need to change the camera, then change BFCom to match.

What is Overstep?

OVS (OVerStep) is a phenomenon where the DMA engine cannot keep up with the data stream from the camera. The most common reasons for this are:

  • The BW of the camera video stream is higher than the BW of the PCI interface
  • The MB bridge(s) will not give enough access to the PCI for frame grabber DMA engine

Obviously, high activity on the MB will generate OVS. We always suggest to customer to stop activity while acquiring data from the camera. Access to disc or high intensity graphics are the usual suspects.

Can you explain the colors of the TriLED on the Axion

The Axion 1xE has 1 Tri LEDs while the 2xE has 2.  Tri LED1 is related to VFG0 and Tri LED2 is related to VFG1

Note the following color/flash rate meanings

Blinking Blue – PoCL “hunt” mode, looking for a camera to see if it needs power
Blue – PoCL power is being provided to camera (this stage does not last long)
Green – Pixel Clock from camera received
Blinking Green – LVAL from camera received

How can I rollback to an earlier version of the SDK

Windows caches drivers and by default always uses the one with the newest version number regardless of what is most recently installed. The good news is that you can roll the system back to any driver version you want. The procedure is below:

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To roll back to an older driver

The solution is simple, you just need to manually tell Windows to use the older driver. Here are the instructions:

1. Open the Device Manger
2. Search the list for “Imaging devices”, then “BitFlow XXXXX”
3. Right click on the relevant BitFlow board e.g. Axion and select “Update Driver Software”
4. Select “Browse my computer for driver software”
5. Select “Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer”
6. In the next dialog, look in the list for “BitFlow Frame Grabber Version X.XXX”, select this item and hit Next
7. The older driver will be installed
8. You must then reboot your computer

When your computer reboots, run our utility VerCheck and make sure the DLLs and the Driver are all the exact same version.

I have an installation issue with my Windows 7 system and the latest SDK

Starting with SDK 6.11 we are signing our kernel driver with a SHA-2 certificate. Microsoft is phasing out SHA-1 certificates. Unfortunately Windows 7 as it was originally released did not support SHA-2 certs. There is a patch which was released some time ago and you should have it on your system if you have automatic updates turned on. However, we understand why a machine vision system might have automatic updates turned off. The simple solution is to install just the following Microsoft patch, this will fix support for SHA-2 certs.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=46148

After you install this patch, reboot your system and the driver should work.

We are sorry about the inconvenience this has caused, but Microsoft is really forcing our hand here.

This problem does not exist on Windows 8 and 10.