1.Make sure a Gigabit Ethernet card is installed on your system. To achieve the best performance, use a card that supports "Jumbo" frames of at least 9 KB size. You should only use a default Windows driver or the driver provided by the manufacturer of your network card.
Attention - do not use special drivers (such as "high-performance driver") provided by your camera manufacturer. Those drivers use their own protocols not compatible with ActiveGigE and would prevent ActiveGigE-based software from recognizing your GigE Vision™ cameras.
2. From the Start menu open Control Panel, then click Network Connections. Right click the network connection which will be used with your camera. From the context menu select Properties. This will display Local Area Connection Properties window.
3. Click Configure button. The adapter properties window will be displayed. Select the Advanced tab. This will bring up the Property list which will be different depending on the model and type of the network card. Select Jumbo Frames and change the value to the maximum size allowed. If the Jumbo Frames option does not appear in the list, your network card might not support it, in which case the performance of the camera will be reduced.
4. If the Receive Descriptors (or Receive Buffers) option is available in the list, change the value to 512. Set Max IRQ per Second (if available) to 1000. Set Interrupt Moderation (if available) to On. Set Interrupt Moderation Rate (if available) to Extreme. Click OK.
5. Reopen Local Area Connection Properties by right-clicking the network connection icon in the Network Connections window and selecting Properties. Select the Advanced tab at the top. Click the Settings button. The Windows Firewall window will be displayed. Select Off to turn off the Windows firewall. The camera will not communicate with the system if the firewall is active.
6. Reopen Local Area Connection Properties by right-clicking the network connection icon in the Network Connections window and selecting Properties. From the list of items select Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) and click the Properties button. The Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) Properties window will be displayed. Select Use the following IP address and enter 169.254.1.1 in the IP address field. Enter 255.255.0.0 in the Subnet mask field. Click OK to save your changes.
Note - the network card IP address can be any 169.254.xxx.yyy value as long as it is unique in your local network. The best way to choose this number is to first select Obtain IP addresses automatically. Then once the camera is connected, double click the network connection icon in the Network Connections window, select the Support tab and view the discovered IP address. Then redo step 6 to configure the network card with that address.
Note - the configuration procedure above assumes that your camera has the IP address in the 169.254.x.x class B range, which should be a default factory setting. If the camera IP address has been re-assigned to a different address range, you either reset the camera IP address to the default factory setting or set up a corresponding IP/subnet for your network card.
7. Back in the Local Area Connection Properties window, in the list of items used by the connection, unselect every item except Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), then click OK. The card is now fully configured for use with GigE Vision™ compliant cameras.
8. Connect your camera to the network card using a CAT-5e Ethernet cable. Power up the camera. From the Start menu select All Programs -> ActiveGigE -> GcamViewer. The viewer window should appear with the live video from the camera, allowing you to scroll and zoom the live image, ajdust the camera settings and save the images. You are now ready to move to the next chapter and create your own GigE Vision application!
