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Welcome & Goals

viva-genicam provides pure Rust building blocks for the GenICam ecosystem supporting GigE Vision and USB3 Vision, with first-class support for Windows, Linux, and macOS.

Who is this book for?

  • End-users building camera applications who want a practical high-level API and copy-pasteable examples.
  • Contributors extending transports, GenApi features, and streaming – who need a clear mental model of crates and internal boundaries.

What works today

  • GigE Vision: GVCP discovery, GVSP streaming with frame reassembly, events, action commands, chunk parsing, FORCEIP, persistent IP configuration.
  • USB3 Vision: device discovery, GenCP register I/O, bulk-endpoint streaming, async frame iterator.
  • GenApi: NodeMap with all standard node types (Integer, Float, Enum, Boolean, Command, Category, String, SwissKnife, Converter), pValue delegation, selectors, runtime access predicates (pIsLocked, pIsAvailable, pIsImplemented), node metadata and visibility filtering.
  • CLI (viva-camctl): discovery, feature get/set, streaming, events, chunks, benchmarks, IP configuration, and a diagnostic report bundle.
  • Service bridge: expose cameras over Zenoh for Viva Studio, the desktop app in studio/.

What does not work yet

Worth knowing before you build on it:

  • Packet resend is not wired in. The GVSP resend machinery exists and nothing calls it, so the resends statistic is always zero and means “not implemented” rather than “none were needed”. Watch drops.
  • The Python bindings are narrower than the Rust API — no chunks, events, time sync or action commands. Python bindings lists the gaps.
  • Viva Studio is experimental. It works, and it has been driven against very little hardware.

The protocol implementations follow the published EMVA specifications and are validated against built-in fake camera simulators (190+ automated tests). Testing against physical cameras from different manufacturers is ongoing – bug reports and compatibility feedback are welcome.

How this book is organized

  • Start with Quick Start to build, test, and run the first discovery.
  • Read the Primer and Architecture to get the big picture.
  • Use Crate Guides and Tutorials for hands-on tasks.
  • See Networking and Troubleshooting when packets don’t behave.