Bayer vs RGB1 performance for Prosilica cameras

[Bruce Hill <bhill@slac.stanford.edu>]

Hi Mark,
I've been digging into a problem we've been having with some of
our Prosilica cameras not being able to sustain a decent frame rate
when read via areaDetector.

Most of our gigE cameras work great, but I traced the problem to our
color cameras, which are Manta G146C, 1388x1038 w/ 4MB image.
Best case we're getting 7-8fps on these, and when more than one was
in use on an experiment, we couldn't run them reliably at more than 1fps
unless we put each on it's own local ethernet adapter.   As long as each
camera has it's own adapter, they can run 7-8fps.   My initial theory was
that we were getting network packet failures as the camera is sending
all the data via UDP packets.

By chance, one ended up in free run and Bayer mode, and I found it
running nearly 18hz.     I setup a test w/ 4 IOC's split across 2 RHEL5 hosts, each
reading one Manta G146C cameras via our switch, and can run all 4 at 18hz.
Setting one to RGB1 causes it to drop to a few fps, w/ lots of packet errors
and dropped frames.

I tried making the exe owned by root w/ setuid, and I can toggle either camera
between Bayer and RGB1 and both maintain 17+fps, but if I put both in RGB1,
I start getting tons of packet errors and the fps plummets on both cameras.

Have you seen any issues w/ RGB1 vs Bayer on these cameras?

Is that something that would be handled in the areaDetector code, or
should I be contacting Allied Vision?

Thanks!
- Bruce