PVCAM is an ANSI C library of camera control and data acquisition functions. This library, which is identical across platforms and operating systems, provides an interface that allows developers to specify the camera setup, exposure, and data storage attributes.

About this SDK

SDK - Software Development Kit - allows programmers to access and use the capabilities of PVCAM© (Programmable Virtual Camera Access Method) library.

For developer convenience, an environment variable is created by the PVCAM installer on both Linux and Windows platforms which will guide developers to the location of all binaries and header files needed to develop with PVCAM as well as Visual Studio and similar environments. This environment variable is called PVCAM_SDK_PATH and can be discovered in the Windows explorer using %PVCAM_SDK_PATH% syntax and Visual Studio using $(PVCAM_SDK_PATH) syntax. Additionally, if the developer desires to build with a special version of PVCAM different than the version installed, the "system" environment variable may be overwritten using a "user" environment variable with the same name.

System Overview

For a system to use a Teledyne Photometrics camera, the system must have the PVCAM runtime library installed. Imaging applications can then access cameras by loading the PVCAM shared library and interfacing with the PVCAM API. The PVCAM libraries will take care of enumerating the cameras in the system and forwarding the communication to the appropriate device driver. The application does not need to know the differences in camera interfaces as it only talks to the generic PVCAM API.

Hardware Support

PVCAM library supports all modern Teledyne Photometrics brand hardware together with Teledyne QImaging cameras such as Retiga R1, R3, R6, LUMO, ELECTRO, MicroPublisher 6.0 and optiMOS.

Include Files

Any program using PVCAM must include the following files:

master.h - system-specific definitions and types (must be included before pvcam.h)
pvcam.h - constants and prototypes for all functions

After including the files above, application development can be started.

Contact Information

For techical support and general inquiries, please contact Teledyne Photometrics at the following address:

Teledyne Photometrics
3440 East Britannia Drive, Suite 100
Tucson, Arizona 85706 (USA)
TEL: +1.520.889.9933 (main phone)
TEL: +1.800.874.9789 (customer service, technical support)
FAX: +1.520.573.1944
Tech Support E-mail: photo.nosp@m.metr.nosp@m.ics.s.nosp@m.uppo.nosp@m.rt@te.nosp@m.ledy.nosp@m.ne.co.nosp@m.m

For technical support and service outside the United States, see our web page at www.photometrics.com. An up-to-date list of addresses, telephone numbers, and e-mail addresses of Teledyne Photometrics overseas offices and representatives is maintained on the web page.