Getting started

the phantom-cli package provides command line tools for testing and exploring the network interface of Vision Research Phantom Cameras. This projects will only support cameras, that operate on the PH16 camera protocol as specified in this PDF.

Prerequisites

Currently this project is only supported for unix environments and is only actively developed and tested on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. Although different UNIX and especially ubuntu distro’s should work, it is not guaranteed.

Furthermore this project works with Python >= 3.5.

And of course to be able to communicate with the camera, your machine needs a functioning ethernet interface.

Installation

It is strongly encouraged to install this package using pip, as it will automatically handle the installation and setup of the commands provided by this package.:

pip install phantom-cli

You can check, if the installation worked correctly, by attempting to execute one of the scripts

ph-test --help

If there is no command by that name, try uninstalling and reinstalling the package using pip and super user privileges.

The Hardware

Now it comes to setting up your PC to actually be able to communicate with the camera. The following section will explain the general steps needed.

Important note: There are some cameras, that offer a 10G ethernet connection. These will have to be treated differently and are not being addressed in the coming section. The following information refers to a standard ethernet connection only!

1. First, you will have to configure the ethernet interface of your PC to the correct IP range, which the camera also uses and expects.

Your ethernet interface should be set up to a static IP 100.100.100.xxx, replacing the x’s with any valid number you choose, for example 100.100.100.1. Additionally a netmask of 100.100.255.255 is required.

2. If your ethernet is all set up and ready you can plug in the ethernet cable to the phantom camera! Note that some cameras need some time to boot before, they are ready to communicate.

3. The final step is to identify the specific IP address of your camera. Usually the IP address is either printed on a sticker located somewhere on the camera itself, or listed in the additional resources shipped with the camera.

Once you have the IP address of the camera, you can proceed and check the network connection using the ph-test script.

ph-test <PHANTOM IP>

If the connection to the Phantom can be established, the output of the script will tell you so. In case there was a problem with the connection consider to turn on the log messages for further troubleshooting:

ph-test --log=DEBUG <PHANTOM IP>

Important note: The “–log=DEBUG” option is also available for every other command in this package and might come in handy, when troubleshooting or generally taking a closer look at the underlying protocols.