GSA Line Scan Camera

Setup

The Line Scan camera's function is to detect a flying ball and send a trigger signal to the ball tracking cameras.

The camera is to be mounted at the top left or right corner of the enclosure, 7 to 8 ft away - towards the screen - from the normal tee position and pointing down at approximately 45 degrees.

The camera's internal (firmware) ball detection software is pre-loaded with the lens pre-focused and should function correctly without any need for adjustment.

Connect the camera to a free USB port on your PC and the RCA trigger cables to both the vertical and horizontal ball tracking cameras.

Note: If not using our PC then you need to install the Line Scan camera driver. See at bottom of this page for details

Start the GSA Control Panel and open the camera window.

You should see that the cameras trigger and new camera images are captured anytime a golf ball passes in the field of view of the line scan camera.

Should the camera not function then the following procedure should be followed.

To test the camera the camera's internal firmware must be replaced with the LineScanStandard software.

To do this, start the CCD Linear Camera Demo application (located in the GSAControlPanel\CCD Line Scan Camera\Application folder) and click on the spanner symbol on the top left hand side of the screen.

From the drop down list select the LineScanStandard (also located in the GSAControlPanelCCD Line Scan Camera\Application folder) and click the PROG button

After loading is completed you should see the confirmation message as in the image above.

Noe unplug the camera USB cable from the PC and reconnect again to initialize the new firmware in the camera on power up.

Now click the "Show Real Time Spectrum" radio button on the left side of the screen

and then the blue arrow at the top left hand side of the screen to start the frame capturing process.

You should now see images similar to the above.

The light blue line shows the signal strength of each of the 2048 pixels in the camera

which represents the brightness of the surface the camera is pointing to.

The camera is designed to trigger the ball tracking cameras whenever 3 or more neighboring pixels exceed a stength of 300 over the dark level on the scale.

The dark level is the level when no light is getting to the camera. i.e. when the cap is on the lens. It is 113 in the above image.

So the trigger threshold is 413 (113 + 300) for this camera.

This 300 above dark level threshold should not be exceeded when no ball or any other object is in the field of view of the camera.

Should any pixels exceed this threshold then there is something in the floor material that is reflecting light which must be located and removed.

You'll notice in the above image that we have a couple of spikes in the line but these are less than 3 pixels wide and do not exceed the 300 limit.

If nearly all the pixels in the line are above the 300 over darlk level threshold then the either the flooring material is not suitable - ie it is not non-reflective - or the camera's lens aperture is too open.

Decreasing the amount of light entering the camera via the aperture setting on the lens may solve the problem but if closed too much then high speed balls may not be detected.

You'll have to experiment a biit to get the right setting in this case.

To verify that the camera is being aimed in the right direction do the following:

Place two pieces of white paper (approx letter format) 5ft apart, centered and inline with the line scan camera (ie 6ft away from the tee position).

If the camera is aimed correctly then you should see an image similar to the above.

The camera should see the white paper on the right near the center of the image and the paper on the left on the left of the image.

When you have the camera setup correctly then we need to reload the camera's golf ball trigger software.

To do this, once again click the spanner button to open the firmware load and program window. Now select the LineScanTrigger file

(located in the GSAControlPanel\CCD Line Scan Camera\Application folder) and click the PROG button.

When loading is complete, unplug and reconnect the camera from the PC to power-up initialize the camera with the new firmware.

Installing the line scan camera driver

Connect the line scan camera via the USB cable to the PC.

Open the Windows Device Manager, go to other devices, right click on the Unkown Device and select Install or Update Driver.

Click the "Browse my computer for driver software"

Navigate to the CCD Line Camera folder on your PC (it will have been copied to your PC during the GSA Golf installation process)

Select the appropriate driver section for your PC type (e.g. Windows7 x64 for 64 bit Windows, Windows x86 for 32 bit Windows).

Click OK.

After a while you should see that the driver has been successfully installed.