PICOS EXTENDED

Features

General Description

PICOS-EXTENDED Library package contains 7 basic function blocks to control the framegrabber:

Input Functions
This group of functions controls the image data input: the selection of the camera type (RGB or B/W), the input channel (AFP/CFP-AT: 1 of 2 for RGB, 1 of 6 for B/W; BFP-AT: 1 of 4 B/W), the A/D-converter high and low levels for all 3 frames and the input look-up-tables (LUT's).
Output Functions
This group contains all functions to manipulate the monitor display of the stored image data such as the selection of the frame to be displayed, the output look-up-table, the AFP/CFP-AT's image color format (24-bit, 15-bit, 8-bit).
Display Functions
The AFP/CFP image frame grabbers provide an image and overlay data area of up to 2048 x 1024 (CFP) or 2048 x 2048 pixels (AFP) for all 3 frames red, green and blue. Access and display of these 3 frames can be done in various image formats, color mode combinations and spatial resolutions. The BFP-AT offers 2048 x 1024 x 8 bit to be defined in different ways.
Transfer Functions
These functions allow block- or line-oriented image data transfer between the frame grabber and user memory or disk files. Image data file storage and retrieval on harddisk may be performed with multiple 256 x 256 square blocks or in line-by-line format. Fast user access to image data is performed via line and column read/write functions.
Overlay Functions
The overlay area of the XFP board is an additional data plane of the same size as the image data plane and allows for overlaying image data with user information like text, drawings, masks, etc. Furthermore it allows to use a bit mask for setting image data underneath this mask selectively to live status. Selective or general clearing of this plane is possible.
LUT Functions
With this group of functions the input and output look-up-tables can be set, switched and selected. General Functions Initializing and resetting the frame grabber, selecting video standards and other general utilities are provided here.

System specific functions

Windows Environment:
The Windows Library is implemented as a dynamic link library DLL. PICOS-DLL is a complete, easy-to-use function library for compilers which are able to call a DLL (Borland* C++, Turbo Pascal for Windows*, Microsoft-C*, Visual-Basic,etc.). Windows is a 16 bit environment, so you have the same restrictions as under plain old DOS. If you want to set a pointer to the frame grabber memory you have to call the function "GetSel" to get a selector and compute a far pointer out of this ( see function "GetSel" ). The selector you get has a size of 64 kB if the address is below 1 MB ( Mapper address 0xA0000, 0xD0000 or 0xE0000 ) or 2MB if it is above ( Mapper Address 0xC00000 or 0xE00000 , only BFP ). If you want to use the protected mode mapper, verify that your computer has less than 12 MB memory and the pointers you use are able to calculate an offset above 0xFFFF ( 32 bit offset, normally requires assembly ).

Windows NT Environment:
The Windows NT package consists of a 32 bit DLL and an NT specific driver. The DLL resides in user space and so it is possible to rebuild or debug these functions very easy, whereas the driver resides in kernel space to allow the DLL the hardware access. Windows NT has a linear address space, that means each application uses its own selectors with 32 bit offset to access 4 GB memory and never changes these selectors. So under Windows NT you could create a selector and do the same things as under Windows, but it is much easier. All you have to do is call the function "GetLinAdr" and cast it to a pointer. This funcion returns a linear address that points to the 64 kB mapper below 1 MB. It is not possible to use the BFP protected mode mapper, mainly because Windows NT won't start with less than 12 MB memory.

Win32s Environment:
This environment consists of some redistributable libraries from Microsoft to enhance Windows 3.x to start Windows NT executables. This Win32 subset (WIN32s), the 32 bit PICOS DLL and the Win32s specific universal thunking „PICOS16.DLL“ allows a Windows NT exe to participate from the advantages of 32bit and the wide distribution of Windows. The handling of Win32s applications is identical with Windows NT.

DOS Extender Environment:
DOS Extender switch to protected mode to allow applications to use a 32 bit environment under DOS if they don't need a GUI. The DOS Extender package consists of several static libraries to support all possible combinations of compiler and extender, which are shown below:

Best combination is Watcom with the Rational extender, Microsoft with Pharlap TNT 6.1 and Borland with the PowerPack.
The Watcom compiler supports a segmented flat memory modell , that means it is possible to make a far call and change the selector. This is very usefull, because so you can call "GetSel" to receive a selector that points to the first megabyte, the DOS memory, cast it to a far pointer and add the return value of "GetLinAdr", which is simply the offset to the mapper base address. Now your pointer consists of 48 bits, 16 bit selector and 32 bit offset.
The Borland/Microsoft compiler do not support a segmented memory modell, the key word "far" is unknown. But we need a pointer( selector) to a specific address, and no extender has a system function to convert a 16:32 pointer to a 0:32 pointer. So we had to implement something without compiler support. The solution is to switch a selector each time we want to access the mapper memory. You can see how this is done in the source files hwaccess.cpp and extender.cpp( this means assembly code ), but it is highly recommended to use the PixRd/Wr, LinRd/Wr or BlkRd/Wr functions to copy the mapper memory in a buffer in your data area.
The libraries come with a sample (main.c) and batch files to build an executable for the different environments. The pathes in the batch files need to be adapted to your settings.

Function Description

Related Products

PICLAB-32 for Windows3.1, WindowsNT and DOS 32bit Extender

Vision Trainer

Hardware

AFP-AT

BFP-AT

Ordering Numbers and Options