To date, the USB 2.0 cameras in Point Grey’s product line include the Chameleon™ and the Firefly^® MV USB. We have designed our USB cameras to implement the IIDC 1394-based Digital Camera Specification over a USB connection. Essentially, IIDC register reads and writes have been mapped to a USB control endpoint. As a result, USB cameras behave like other FireWire cameras, with the exception that isochronous streaming is done using USB bulk transfers at a maximum data rate of 480 Mb/s.

All of the libraries in Point Grey’s FlyCapture SDK can be used in conjunction with Point Grey USB cameras in the same manner as with FireWire cameras. As well, our system-level drivers for interfacing with DirectShow, ActiveX or TWAIN applications work the same for both USB and FireWire cameras. To take advantage of Point Grey’s implementation of IIDC over USB with other APIs, you may need to customize your applications. For example, members of the libdc1394 community have worked with Point Grey to make all of their functions support our USB cameras. As a starting point in your development, we encourage users to view the libdc1394 implementation of IIDC over USB at http://sourceforge.net/projects/libdc1394/.

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