SUB2r control center's revisions

The software bundle is available to all Windows 10 Desktop users free of charge. Obviously you need the SUB2r's camera to take advantage of the functionality provided by the SUB2r apps. You can always order your SUB2r camera in our shop

• SUB2r-lib:

• SUB2r-lib:
  • sysinfo (SysInternals) API V1 is now ready for prime time (will be available automagically once the next version of FX3 rolls out)

• SCC:
  • SysInternals (FX3 v.53+) dialog box that shows some internal system information for a connected SUB2r device
  • on-board fan can now be controlled manually (also need FX3 v.53+)
  • fixed a bug were some values (in the dialogs that have not been manually opened yet during this session) were at 0 instead of the proper values read from the camera

• SUB2r-lib:
  • first iteration of adding a “SysInfo” support - will be automagically enabled once the core functionality is implemented on camera
  • added a new sample program to demo the usage of the new SysInfo API and another one to demo the use of floating point values in API
  • implemented ISO and INT USB endpoints
  • fixed an issue with supporting “raw video” switch
  • added simplified API support for DPC threshold and count
  • adjusted the bit-width of the Black Level value to better match the practical range
  • narrowed the sensor's Global Gain range to better represent the reality (the OV documentation is once again misleading…)
  • properly reset version info when connecting to a different device (in multi-device setups)
  • support for IEEE 754 floating point values' use in API
  • “transaction” support for sensor group writes to properly handle nested requests
  • fixed an issue with reading sensor's standby mode value
• SCC:
  • improved Automated DPC algorithm
  • “demo mode” (in Playground for now) - a way to cycle through a list of settings' files with a set delays after each load
  • minor improvements in firmware update log's messaging
  • properly handle the “raw video” mode in UI
  • drag-n-drop support for 3 types of files: settings (.fws), FX3 code (.img), FPGA code (.bin)
  • fixed a long-standing issue of loading settings' file breaking the video stream
  • improved “group write” usage for writing multi-register values to sensor
  • FPS fine-tuning and sensor binning controls (will be enabled with the next version of firmware)
  • FPGA console: added a command to the list for switching the camera into Bootloader Mode (for programming a new firmware image with Cypress Control Center)
  • removed Playground's AWB settings dialog as the functionality of using color temperature for white balance is coming to camera's firmware code in the next version
  • Color Grading: HvS and LvS ranges are reworked to match the new Saturation limits coming in the next version of firmware
  • LvL sliders were occasionally getting into negative values - this is fixed now
  • switching to “Sensor” tab no longer forces a spontaneous reload of values onto camera
  • autofunctions' auto-update interval limits are different between FX3 v.51 and v.52 - SCC automatically updates the range based on the version
• aria:
  • UVC dialog box improvement: UVC spec allows for the STEP to be inferred from MIN and MAX values for most of Processing Unit's controls
  • launching UVC dialog no longer writes just read values back to camera

• frankie: (finally) addressed the USB enumeration notification (that Windows sends every single time there's any change in USB configuration anywhere in the system). The SCC should be much quieter now and only react on changes that it cares about (also should be honoring the “Track device change notifications” preference when a new device is plugged in)

• frankie:
  • Color Grading dialog - remove (invisible) unused controls
  • Color Grading: add LvS and LvL
  • Color Grading: support for “curves” for all CG
  • Color Grading: added “help” that opens a wiki page with description of various shortcuts used in that GUI
  • Color Grading: optimized API calls a bit reducing the USB traffic by up to 50% in some cases and by 25% in most cases

• frankie:
  • significantly improved the stability of communication to camera
  • disable main window's resizing
  • re-enable keyboard shortcuts
  • ground work for additional Color grading functionality (still in development but should be ready “soon”)
  • loading of partial (truncated) settings file with some missing entries is now fully supported

• frankie: reduce communication overhead which should help with the “Sensor tab is non-responsive” issue people are observing

• frankie: now using the MS C++ Redistributables for MSVC 2019
  • added support for resizing dialogs (more work to be done)
  • reworked the FPGA Console UI
  • Autofunctions (white balance and exposure) are finally ready for prime time and therefore moved out of Playground and into the main interface, accessible under the Video menu
  • Video tab is renamed to Camera and the Camera Control tab is now gone completely (with the control for auto-exposure now under the Video menu)
  • Color grading UI gets a new “Default” button that sets the sliders to SUB2r-recommended values (not the same as “Neutral”!)
  • support for the upcoming denoising support (will get enabled once it is available)
  • massive internal code restructuring

• frankie: build with MSVC 2019
  • and correct the Saturation calculations since the move to HSL pipeline has been delayed slightly

• frankie: improve stability in communication with the camera

• frankie - now works in offline mode
• support for the new imaging pipeline that is totally reworked to process pixels in HSL mode
  • the HSL pipeline will be introduced with the next firmware update of FX3(48) and FPGA(67)
  • this introduces a slight change in how the UVC Saturation and HvS table interoperate resulting in all the previously saved configuration files being slightly wrong. There will be no fix for this - just re-save your files

• aria: fixed a silent non-start caused by misbehavior of certain 3rd-party capture cards
• aria: a new POC for AWB based on \(R*G*B\) product
• frankie: hide “Playground” menu behind “enable Beta functionality” setting

• general
  • aria and franki: properly remember the geometry of opened windows
  • more code refactoring for better maintainability
  • UVC controls: rename “Device settings” to “Video settings”
  • return correct device name for non-FX3 devices
  • use Vendor Request Commands via the new API if I2C fails via EP4
• SUB2r-lib
  • remove the use of std::endl in sample code
  • reduce default endpoint timeout to 2s
• frankie
  • UVC controls - release the background interface object when not in use to help with the video session management
  • manual firmware update UI is now in “Expert” menu
  • fixed an issue when settings file will sometimes not load fully
  • switching between devices now clears the savefile information to prevent accidental overwrites
  • added keyboard shortcuts to access Color Grading pannels (currently Ctrl+F1 and Ctrl+F2)
• aria
  • migrated registry data into SUB2r\Aria key
  • “CPU burn” slider extends to the full “1 second between frames” idle time
  • improved performance of the frame analyzer
  • mouse-over “line histogram” now shows that line as an overlay over the video
  • “R*G*B transform” is an idea for an improved auto-white balance. It shows the pixels that should be considered for AWB calculations
  • added context meny item for a double-click
  • corrected a GDI resource leak
  • removed AWB/AE tools as they are no longer relevant (use scope parade instead)
  • remove flickering on drawing parades
  • share more common code between various SUB2r apps
  • slight zoom-in to smooth out the parade lines
  • enable the “close” functinoality on video window (which closes the whole application)
  • optimize and improve reliability of the statistics' collection code
  • display correct mouse cursor over video window
  • fixed the aspect ratio of the video window that was slightly scewed after resizing a window
  • fixed a rare crash on exit
  • detailed version info now includes a tersly formatted date (instead of a UNIX time in seconds)
  • moved “About…” into context menu of the video window
  • fixed a crash in window restore code (minimize-restore functionality)

• SUB2r-lib
  • make use of C++17 attributes, like [[nodiscard]]
  • minor code readability improvements
• frankie:
  • Color Substitution: make a “hand” cursor over clickable static items
  • Color Grading:
    • improve the way the sliders are drawn
    • global shift to left or right with 2 new buttons or using a keyboard (Ctrl+left or Ctrl+right arrow)
  • “Done” popup for auto-DPC calibration
• Aria:
  • Introducing the first one of the scopes: parade

• Firmware upgrade notifications are now more noticeable and provide a hassle-free one-click firmware upgrade experience

• non-modal dialog popups are now independent from the main window so can be minimized/restored separately
• Color Grading: Ctrl+Alt+LClick curves to a chosen ankor color band to produce the same final color
• Color Grading: Ctrl+Alt+RClick curves all the color bands to produce the same final color
• LEDs are no longer being turned off when launching the SCC
• API and Logs are now merged and can be viewed in a much improved log view window (now non-modal and auto-refreshed with new log entries)
• Automagical DPC calibration - hassle-free way to get rid of those pesky random bright broken pixels
• fixed an occasional hanging

• Cypress FX3 driver - use the newer one from 2017 (up from 2013)
• Installer is a bit simplified - no more manual choices for the driver and MS VC++ Redist. 2017 installs as those are handled fully automagically now
• frankie: Color grading panels are now half their vertical size
• frankie: properly display “Frankie, Gen. 3 camera” instead of “RC1”

• WinSDK 10.0.17763.0
• SUB2r-lib
  • retarget to 10.0.17763.0
  • CG helper for Color grading
• general improvements
  • save windows' positions even on close(), not only destroy()
  • various bug/hang/crash fixes
  • frankie: Green Screen setup - properly draw the hue slider
  • frankie: firmware update menu disabled if no FX3
• installer
  • don't fail if a newer C++ redist is installed
• frankie:
  • switching to/from admin mode doesn't induce a restart anymore
  • ESC-cancel long operations (when the Splash dialog is displayed)
  • reset device menu item
  • LED→Peripherals
  • both consoles (FPGA and sensor) and Test Patterns are now in Expert mode menu and are pop-up non-modal dialogs
  • Playground menu is now properly hidden in non-Expert mode
  • Reset FX3 in FPGA Console no longer yells - it is now considered to be a safe command if FPGA Console
  • menu auto-adjusts to the currently loaded version of the firmware on the camera
  • support floats in settings file
  • CG - partial support for the on-camera color grading
    • shift-slider moves 5 sliders together
    • save/load
    • right-click resets the slider to neutral
    • split into independent windows
    • Ctrl-lineup of values
    • sliding scale for sensitivity
    • slider info (first cut), no color picker yet and the slider's edit box is hidden for now until I figure out a good way to make it behave
    • HvH colors are now proportional, also moved the transparent slider into CG code
    • undo-redo with support for file loads
• auto-DPC functionality (manual DPC is now for Experts only)

• installer:
  • no longer creates an extra user directory
• frankie:
  • Color Enhancer - dramatically improve the performance while mouse-selecting a new source pixel, making it nearly real-time now (used to be an up to a over a second's worth of mouse lag!)
  • error messages are shown in the status bar for a bit longer now so there's time to read and comprehend them

• frankie:
  • Added new “push current values to camera [F2]” menu item that goes through the UI of SCC and grabs whatever values are there and blindly pushes them onto camera. Useful for those times when you have more than one camera and multiple SCC instances open and accidentally modify the wrong one
  • Made error and “new version available” messages more noticeable in the status bar
  • Fixed a few crashes caused by running the tool with no SUB2r camera present on the system

• frankie:
  • color substitution enhancer: draw brightness range (luma indicator) in each band's button
  • drag-n-drop for color bands
  • test patterns are now drawn at real time instead of being stored as BMP resources (saves ~40KB of size)
  • various dialogs now automatically remember and properly restore their position/size
• RealTime SlowMo
  • optimize color space conversion, reducing the per-frame processing time from ~80ms down to under 30ms
  • added CPU utilization control

• F5 (or “View→Refresh tab” menu) can now be used to refresh current tab's values (except UVC tabs, for now) eliminating the need to switch tabs to see refreshed camera settings
• Preferences dialog now has “Defaults” button
• Color substitution improvements:
  • “Inverse” button will set up the color substitution to be the opposite of the currently configured band
  • save/load now properly work even if the color substitution screen is not open

• General:
  • Got rid of the Windows Store and re-written the installer using NSIS platform (version 3.03, if you must know)
  • Lots of internal code changes to bring it to the latest C++ standard (C++17)
• SUB2r-lib version 2018-11-20:
  • Removed dependency on CyAPI.lib
  • If there are multiple SUB2r cameras present on the system they each get an additional unique ID to help users distinguish them in SUB2r tools
• The package now includes the so-called Piggy Control Center - a (now ancient) .NET-based utility to control the v2 of the camera, code named “Piggy”. This is purely for nostalgic reasons and the package is downloaded on-demand when asked for
• SUB2r control center:
  • Introducing 4 bands of Chroma Key Enhancer (up from 1)
  • Video/audio streaming are now both turned off before the firmware upgrade or a DPC calibration processes are started
  • Improve load of Chroma Key Enhancer's values from settings' file
  • Minimalistic check for online updates is now implemented
• aria
  • a previously internal tool is now making its public debut (still as a Beta version though)
• SlowMo - a real-time slow motion (very much Beta) is also making its appearance out of the dark corners of internal tools as a little cute toy

• Changed the URL to fetch firmware update images
• Improved stability when using local file images for firmware update
• Continue improving the underlying library's code (see SUB2r-lib for details)
• Introduced an “API commands' log” - disabled by default, enable it in Preferences and access the viewer under the Playground menu (must have “Expert mode” enabled to see that menu)
• Distinguish between specific versions of camera: Alpha and RC1 (“production” coming up soon)
• Improved the restoration of Chroma Substitution settings (F7 dialog box)
• Removed some redundancies in sending commands to the camera during initial handshake
• Minor improvements to text labels (for readability)
• Firmware upgrade progress screen now scrolls up to show the latest entry
• Re-targeted to Windows SDK version 10.0.17134.0

• Improvements to the SUB2r-lib
• Fixed a bug that was affecting firmware upgrade from file
• Tracking of Device Notifications is now optional (no more blinking status in taskbar). To enable this feature go to Tools→Preferences and check the “Track device change notifications” box

Skipped (to avoid pushing a newly introduced bug to users)

• Microsoft has changed the way Camera Privacy Settings work in the next roll out of the Windows Update and unless explicitly enabled by user the app now cannot access the UVC controls. An error message is now displayed explaining what to do and both “Video” and “Camera” tabs are disabled if the camera is not accessible

• Added “raw video mode” (available through “FPGA Console” tab in Advanced mode). When enabled the video (in 4K mode) is coming in without the demosaicing performed on it. In other words each pixel is a grey scale value of the luminosity with total disregard to color information. This is not a true raw mode (like Cinema DNG, for instance) in that each pixel is a 3-channel 8-bit-per-channel “color” pixel where each channel is the same exact value as the luminosity measured by that particular sensor element
• Continue work on improving the stability of the app

• Add a new menu item to open “release history” wiki page in a browser
• When saving a preset its entries are now sorted by name (which groups related values together for clarity and readability). This doesn't affect the way the file is processed by computer, only the way a human reads the text of that file
• A lot of internal code work to improve the stability
• Some improvements to the SUB2r-lib

• The splash window is back and it is now not switching to the app when the focus is in another program (a game, for instance) and a hot-key for a preset is activated
• Re-read the device's info once the firmware upgrade of either FX3 or FPGA module are complete. This includes re-reading version info, sensor's registers, FPGA status bits, LED status, UVC controls, …

• Fixed a bug where a wrong preset was loaded with a hot key

• Fixed: DPC count displaying an incorrect value in certain scenarios
• Lower bound for the DPC threshold value is now 50 for Normal mode and 4 for Expert mode (upper bound stays 254)
• Standard (non-advanced) mode is a bit simpler now, having had lost a few tabs
• App was crashing when launched with no camera attached to the system - this is fixed now
• In Advanced mode there's a support for playing with the White Balance function
• Support for Quick Presets (the hotkeys work in any mode, but can be set up only in Advanced mode)
• Setting a global gain for OmniVision 10823 chip no longer pushes the value up by 16
• Temporarily disabled the splash (a.k.a. “meditating”) window which was bringing the app into foreground when using hotkeys for loading presets until I figure out a way to do it correctly

• Stability improvements - the app no longer exits silently when there are no cameras connected to the system

• Mostly stability improvements
• Code re-org to extract the “guts” of the logic into a stand-alone library SUB2r-lib, currently only for Windows and C++

• In “Expert” mode there's now a new sub-menu “Playground” with features mostly built for internal use while developing algorithms to run on camera (like auto functions to adjust white balance and exposure)
• “Sensor registers' dump” now only shows up in “Expert” mode

Mainly a transition to the Windows App Store distribution so that there's no more need to download an installer and, even more importantly, once that migration is done the new versions/updates will be “just delivered” to end-user desktops, simplifying the whole upgrade/bugfix process.

• The app is now listed on Windows App Store under its name SUB2r Control Center and is available for free for Desktop users running Windows 10
• When performing DPC calibration there's now a reminded pop-up to stop your streaming
• Added a progress bar to the Firmware Update pop-up

Download installer here.

• When performing DPC calibration there's now a popup window to remind you to stop the video stream before proceeding

Download installer here.

• Camera's firmware upgrade is now supported for both the local binary image files and via SUB2r's server (online connection required)
• Green screen's max saturation was not fully restored from a preset file, fixed now

Download installer here.

• The devices' re-scan now only happens if the number of SUB2r cameras on the system changed so plugging/unplugging other USB devices no longer cause the re-scan to fire up
• When changing UI aspects that need a restart to be aplied there's now a confirmation dialog box
• MS C Run-Time library (CRT) is no longer part of the package but is instead downloaded from the MS's site during installation
• Reduced the package size by 1,009 KB

Download the installer here.

N.B. Uninstall the previous version via Windows Control Panel before installing the new version

Fixes/changes in this version:

• Fixed a bug where Exposure was re-set to “manual”
• UVC auto/manual checkboxes are now properly grayed-out when their change is not supported by the camera
• Switching between normal/expert mode or changing the visual theme will trigger a restart of the app to apply the changes

This is the very first public release that is intended for technical preview only. Download the software package here. That zip file contains the following:

• SUB2r driver Windows10 signed - a secondary driver that is required to access the camera's internals (beyond the standard UVC controls). This driver is not required for video streaming or controlling the camera's “standard” functions via UVC, like brightness, saturation, gamma, etc. Since the driver is not part of Windows' infrastructure (and is, therefore, not available on Windows update servers) you'd have to install the driver yourself. Either navigating to a yellow-question-marked “unknown” device in the device manager and “updating” the driver, or simply by right-clicking on the provided cyusb3.inf file and selecting the “install” option
• frankie+aria - Windows installer for the two main utilities: "Frankie" (SUB2r control center) and "Aria" (video preview). The setup.exe file is not required and is only included for compatibility. Feel free to install the software by just clicking on the installation file SUB2r.msi instead
• playground - a set of non-essential utilities sometimes used for troubleshooting
  • 2r1y-common.dll - a DLL shared (and required) by the executables in this folder
  • DXGI-01-enum-graphics.exe - console app to display system's GPU and monitor configuration as reported by DXGI
  • enum-displays-n-adapters.exe - console app to display system's GPU and monitor configuration as reported by various methods
  • enum-usbs.exe - console app to enumerate USB devices
  • enum-webcams.exe - console app to enumerate imaging devices and microphones
  • MMF_01_enum.exe - console app to display all the cameras and their advertised video modes as well as all the microphones connected to the system
  • MMF_02_cap_D3D9.exe - a simple video preview tool with a few extra functions (like support for rev. 26 RAW mode which sends pre-demosaiced video stream)
  • MMF_03_q_cap.exe - Real-time slow motion tool allows video preview with an in-place just-in-time slow motion (disclaimer: this was developed quite a while ago and since then not being maintained - may have bugs that render the user experience frustrating)
  • MMF_04_cap_D3D9.exe - a video preview and analysis tool that we've used to test out various image processing algorithms and perform some statistical analysis of the video stream's frames
  • uvc2fx3.exe - console app to “match up” system video devices to their corresponding Cypress counterparts (basically a link between a UVC device and the “guts” of the SUB2r camera)
• html-tools - a few HTML-based tools to play with:
  • 2r1y-tb.html - a standalone helper for converting between dec/hex/bin numbers
  • PCC 1.23\piggy.hta - “old radio” control for the older OV 9714 chipset (compatible with OV 9750)
  • PCC 1.23\2r1y-pcca.hta - advanced control panel, allowing access to all internal registers of the sensor chip (one has to have the manufacturer's documentation to be able to utilize this tool)