Visualize and Record

Starting DV

If you own a DVS camera, plug it in, screw in the lens and do not forget to remove the lens cap.

Start DV with

• Windows Double click the DV icon on the Desktop
• macOS Search DV in spotlight
• Linux Execute dv-gui in the command line or select Development -> DV in the system menu

Select input device

DV should automatically open and display the output of your connected camera. Should DV fail to find the correct camera, you can select the input device in the Capture Section of the right bar

Windows USB driver issues

If the desired device is not present it may be that the right driver isn't installed on Windows (WinUSB driver).

Using the zadig tool, it's easy to verify and install the WinUSB driver on Windows.

Once you start Zadig, you should see a list of devices. If not, go to its options and tick "List all devices". Make sure you choose the correct device (not for instance your mouse!).

Then click "Install WCID Driver" to install the WinUSB driver: (WCID devices are usually installed automatically for new instances of devices plugged into the computer.)

If you already have a device installed, you may instead need to select "Replace Driver" rather than "Install WCID Driver". You should check after installation (see below) that you actually have the correct WinUSB driver installed.

You will be notified once done.

You should now see the correct driver (WinUSB Generic Device) in the Device Manager. The libUSB and libUSBK drivers should NOT be installed; they are not compatible with iniVation devices.

Adjusting camera settings

Priority options

Your iniVation camera has many settings and biases that can be adjusted. The most important settings can be found in the right bar.

Non-priority options

All camera settings can be accessed by clicking on the + next to the camera name (shown with the purple annotation in the screenshot above).

A pop-up with all available settings appears. Any setting can be changed right from within this popup. Specific settings can be searched for by typing in the name of the setting in the search bar.

Add / remove an option to priority options

Any option that can be added to priority options has a + button to the right. Clicking this button adds the setting to the list of settings accessible from the right bar in the main window.

To remove an option from priority options, either click the - button to the right of the option, or right click on the option and select Remove from priority option.

The order of priority options can be changed by right-clicking on the option.

Adjusting visualization options

The default Visualize configuration comes with two software modules enabled by default:

• A Noise Filter for the events output
• An Accumulator for basic frame reconstruction from events

The settings for both of these modules can be adjusted the same way as the camera module.

Example: Disable accumulation decay

By default, the accumulator module decays the contribution of old events over time as soon as new events for a pixel arrive. This is, by default, done in an exponential manner.

To switch decay off, click the + button next to Accumulator.

Switch the setting for Decay function from Exponential to None. One can see that the accumulated image is a better representation of reality, but also accumulates more noise over time.

Record data

Select the Record configuration in the left sidebar of DV. The current configuration gets replaced with a standard recording configuration. The default record configuration records all events, frames, imu as well as trigger data from a connected DVS / Davis camera.

Recording can be started by clicking on the button with the red circle. Every recording creates a new file, by default, in your home directory. All data is recorded in the aedat 4.0 format. Files in that format can be read in again by DV, as well as with our dv-python scripts.

Play back data

To play back a file, choose the Playback configuration in the left bar. After the configuration is loaded, one can choose the file from the File option in the right hand bar.