API Device discovery with allow-broadcast-acknowledge / ignore-subnet

Hello,

GenICam Browser has an ‘Ignore Subnet Discover’ setting which, when used, sends a GVCP discover command with the ‘allow broadcast acknowledge’ flag set to true.

This is useful if:

  • you have a camera with an unknown static IP
  • your host has multiple network interfaces, and the camera has been plugged into the wrong one
  • DHCP was unsuccessful and the camera fell back to a link-local address

I can’t see any way to do this via the Python API (or the C++ one for that matter) - how should I go about this? DiscoverFlags is the obvious place to look, but none of the flags seem to provide this setting.

(I’d also like to be able to send a force-IP command with the allow-broadcast-acknowledge flag set, for the same reasons :slight_smile: )

Hi @michaelt :slight_smile:

A quick example:

auto allInterfaceFlags = Cvb::Driver::DiscoverFlags::UpToLevelInterface | Cvb::Driver::DiscoverFlags::IgnoreGevSD;
auto allInterfaces = Cvb::DeviceFactory::Discover(allInterfaceFlags);

// Let's say your camera is connected to the 4th interface found:
Cvb::Driver::DiscoveryInformation& iface = allInterfaces.at(4);

auto allDevFlags = Cvb::Driver::DiscoverFlags::IgnoreVins | Cvb::Driver::DiscoverFlags::IncludeInaccessible;// | Cvb::Driver::DiscoverFlags::IgnoreGevSD;
iface.SetGenApiFeature("TLInterface", "DisableSubnetMatch", "1");
iface.SetGenApiFeature("TLInterface", "AllowBroadcastDiscoveryResponse", "1");
auto devsFound = Cvb::DeviceFactory::Discover(iface, allDevFlags);
//std::cout << iface[Cvb::Driver::DiscoveryProperties::InterfaceId] << std::endl;
if (devsFound.size() > 0)
{
  auto interfaceDevice = Cvb::DeviceFactory::Open(iface.AccessToken());
  auto interfaceNM = interfaceDevice->NodeMap(CVB_LIT("TLInterface"));

  auto deviceUpdateListNode = interfaceNM->Node<Cvb::CommandNode>(CVB_LIT("DeviceUpdateList"));
  auto cfgIPNode = interfaceNM->Node<Cvb::IntegerNode>(CVB_LIT("IPCfg_IP"));
  auto cfgSubnetNode = interfaceNM->Node<Cvb::IntegerNode>(CVB_LIT("IPCfg_Subnet"));
  auto cfgMacNode = interfaceNM->Node<Cvb::IntegerNode>(CVB_LIT("IPCfg_MAC"));
  auto cfgForceNode = interfaceNM->Node<Cvb::CommandNode>(CVB_LIT("IPCfg_SetForceIP"));
  auto cfgStaticNode = interfaceNM->Node<Cvb::CommandNode>(CVB_LIT("IPCfg_SetStatIP"));

  // make node map aware of the device
  deviceUpdateListNode->Execute();
  // we want to configure the found device with MAC
  // 00-01-0D-C2-43-66
  int64_t mac = 0x00010dc24366;
  int64_t macReverse = 0x6643c20d0100;
  cfgMacNode->SetValue(macReverse);
  // New IP 169.254.0.1
  cfgIPNode->SetValue(0xa9fe0001);
  // Subnet 255.255.0.0
  cfgSubnetNode->SetValue(0xFFFF0000);
  // Force the new IP
  cfgForceNode->Execute();
  // make node map aware of new IP
  deviceUpdateListNode->Execute();
  // permanently write the IP to the camera
  cfgStaticNode->Execute();
}

You can read some information like the MAC etc. from an camera in the wrone subnet like so:

auto mac = devsFound.at(0)[Cvb::Driver::DiscoveryProperties::DeviceMac];

Hope this helps!

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This is how discovering in :cvb: Python would look like (no ip setting here):

interface_flags = cvb.DiscoverFlags.UpToLevelInterface | cvb.DiscoverFlags.IgnoreGevSD
all_interfaces = cvb.DeviceFactory.discover_from_root(interface_flags)

broadcast_flags = cvb.DiscoverFlags.IgnoreVins | cvb.DiscoverFlags.IncludeInaccessible | cvb.DiscoverFlags.IgnoreGevSD
all_devices = []
for interface in all_interfaces:
    cvb.DiscoveryInformation.set_genapi_feature(interface, "TLInterface", "DisableSubnetMatch", "1")
    cvb.DiscoveryInformation.set_genapi_feature(interface, "TLInterface", "AllowBroadcastDiscoveryResponse", "1")
    found_devices = cvb.DeviceFactory.discover_from_level(interface.access_token, broadcast_flags)
    for dev in found_devices:
        all_devices.append(dev)
        
for dev in all_devices:
    # Check devices access status etc.:
    # dev.read_property(cvb.DiscoveryProperties.DeviceAccessStatus)

with cvb.DeviceFactory.open(all_devices[0].access_token) as device: # open first camera found (check accessibility before!)
    # work with camera...
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