Precision Time Protocol (PTP) is a protocol used to synchronize clocks throughout a computer network. This protocol is specified in an IEEE standard that has been integrated into the GigE Vision standard.
For machine vision cameras, this protocol important to precisely controlling the triggering of machine vision cameras and peripherals such as strobe lighting.
When PTP is enabled on LUCID cameras, they are able to organize themselves into one master clock and one or more slave clocks using PTP’s Best Master Clock (BMC) algorithm. You can also set a camera to be a slave in ArenaView under the PTP Control node. This node contains other relevant nodes for PTP.
Examples of the ways in which PTP is useful:
- PTP enables the synchronization of multi-camera setups to prevent reduced framerate due to packet collisions.
- PTP enables Scheduled Action Commands feature, which enable images to be captured at a predetermined time.
- LUCID’s PTP Sync feature allows cameras to automatically synchronize their frame rates over PTP. This article shows several ways to synchronize Triton and Helios to for the purposes of adding color to the Helios color output including PTP Sync.
When you configure PTP for your application, you may also need to set up a network bridge.