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Installing pylon and the Framegrabber SDK in Parallel#

Some use-cases require the installation of both pylon and the Framegrabber SDK.

This topic describes how pylon and the Framegrabber SDK are linked and can be used in parallel in different scenarios.

Support for CoaXPress and VisualApplets in pylon#

When installing the support for CoaXPress in pylon, the pylon installer copies a small subset of the Framegrabber SDK to the <pylon-dir>/Runtime/x64/producerCXP subfolder (and the 32-bit counterpart). This subset contains only the files necessary to use the GenTL producer of the Framegrabber SDK and to support the frame grabbers of the CXP-12 acquisition cards (CXP-12 Interface Card, imaWorx CXP-12 Quad, imaFlex CXP-12 Quad and Penta). Many of the libraries you find in the bin folder of a full Framegrabber SDK installation is used by the pylon installation.

For pylon to find and use the GenTL producer, the environment variable GENICAM_GENTL64_PATH (or GENICAM_GENTL32_PATH for 32-bit applications) must be set. Therefore, when you install pylon with support for CoaXPress, pylon also sets the environment variable GENICAM_GENTL64_PATH to <pylon-dir>/Runtime/x64/producerCXP/bin.

The support for the Basler frame grabbers in pylon is limited and provides only the features provided by the acquisition applets.

If you want to use custom applets designed with Visual Applets in pylon, the recommended way is to install pylon without support for CoaXPress and additionally install the version of the Framegrabber SDK that supports the frame grabber you are using. The installer for the Framegrabber SDK will modify the variable GENICAM_GENTL64_PATH and set it to <fgsdk-dir>/bin. If pylon is already installed with support for CoaXPress, make sure that GENICAM_GENTL64_PATH is set to <fgsdk-dir>/bin, and not to <pylon-dir>/Runtime/x64/producerCXP/bin. This way, pylon finds and uses the GenTL producer that is delivered with the Framegrabber SDK to support CoaXPress.

See Using the GenTL Interface for general information about the GenTL Interface. The sections VisualApplets Design Considerations for GenTL and Using Applets Designed with VisualApplets in GenTL contain important information for VisualApplets users.

When using both Basler CameraLink cameras and frame grabbers, pylon works as a configuration tool for the camera and the Framegrabber SDK is used for image acquisition. The link between pylon and the Framegrabber SDK is the CameraLink Serial library clsersis.

While there are no conflicts between pylon and the Framergabber SDK in this scenario, there are various known issues in both products which can complicate things. Basler therefore recommends to install pylon version 7.5 and the Framegrabber SDK version 5.11.2 or newer. This combination of versions has been tested and verified.