GevSharp

Vendor-free, pure managed C# library for industrial GigE cameras: GVCP device control, GVSP streaming with packet resend, and GenICam GenApi XML feature access.

• No native dependencies. No vendor SDK, no GenTL producer (.cti), no filter driver — a tuned UDP socket is all it needs. Runs on Windows, Linux and macOS.
• Full-rate 1 GbE streaming. Dedicated receive thread, large socket buffers, jumbo-frame packet size negotiation, offset-based frame reassembly, and GVSP packet resend to recover drops.
• Complete GenApi node map. Category / Group recursion, Integer / Float / String / Boolean / Enumeration / Command / Register nodes, pValue / pAddress / pIndex indirection, selectors, availability / lock / implementation guards, Converter and SwissKnife formulas — evaluated by an in-house formula engine with no third-party dependency.
• Explicit buffer ownership. Frames are leased from a pool and returned on Dispose; the receiver never overwrites a buffer the consumer still holds. Incomplete frames are dropped and counted by default; delivering them is an explicit opt-in.
• Zero-dependency netstandard2.1 and net8.0 assets. The netstandard2.0 asset (for .NET Framework 4.6.2+ and older Unity) additionally depends on System.Memory, System.Threading.Tasks.Extensions and Microsoft.Bcl.AsyncInterfaces — the three .NET Foundation packages that back Span<T>, ValueTask and IAsyncDisposable there. That asset is not only compiled but executed: the suite is re-run against it on .NET Framework 4.8 in CI.

Status

Early development. The version stays at 0.x because the public API may still move as more cameras are met — see docs/ for the design and the milestone plan.

The library is exercised against an in-process device simulator (tests/GevSharp.Sim) and a third-party virtual camera in CI, on Linux and Windows, plus a .NET Framework 4.8 run of the same tests against the netstandard2.0 asset. macOS is compiled in CI for all three target frameworks but the suite is not run there yet — see docs/architecture.md for what that does and does not mean.

It is also run against real hardware. Two cameras from different vendors (Basler acA2500-14gm and Crevis MG-A500M-22) sharing one 1 GbE port for eight hours delivered 288,000 frames and 163 million packets — 1.46 TB — with no packet missing, no frame short, and the same rate in the first and last five-minute interval. That is two vendors, not the whole field, which is the reason this is not 1.0. docs/evaluation.md records what the hardware settled that no public source did.

Quick look

using GevSharp;
using GevSharp.Pfnc;

var devices = await GevDiscovery.DiscoverAsync();           // all interfaces, broadcast + subnet-directed
await using var dev = await GevDevice.OpenAsync(devices[0]); // takes control, starts heartbeat
var nodes = await dev.GetNodeMapAsync();                     // fetches and parses the camera XML

await nodes.GetFloat("ExposureTime").SetAsync(2000);
await nodes.GetEnumeration("PixelFormat").SetAsync("Mono8");

await using var stream = await dev.OpenStreamAsync();
await stream.StartAsync();

// Tell the node map the transport layer is configured. Vendor descriptions gate the acquisition
// commands on this (AcquisitionStart is a locked write-only node until it is set), and lock the
// format parameters while it holds.
await dev.SetTlParamsLockedAsync(true);
await nodes.GetCommand("AcquisitionStart").ExecuteAsync();

for (var i = 0; i < 10; i++)
{
    using var frame = await stream.ReceiveAsync();           // complete frames only
    Console.WriteLine($"{frame.FrameId}: {frame.Width}x{frame.Height} "
        + $"{PixelFormatInfo.Name(frame.PixelFormatCode)} stride={frame.Stride}");
}

await nodes.GetCommand("AcquisitionStop").ExecuteAsync();
await dev.SetTlParamsLockedAsync(false);

Install

dotnet add package GevSharp

Tools

Two desktop tools and a command line live in samples/. They are built on the library itself, so they also serve as worked examples of the API.

	What it does	Download
Viewer	Finds cameras, opens several at once, and shows them live — an even grid or one large view with the rest in a strip, tiles you can reorder by dragging. Zoom, pan, save a frame, read a pixel, and edit the full GenApi feature tree while the camera streams.	gevsharp-viewer.exe
IP configurator	Puts a camera on the address you want, including one stranded on a subnet you cannot reach, which no ordinary tool can open at all. Fixed or DHCP, in effect at once rather than at the next power-up. It also shows the host adapters, which cameras came in on which one, and whether that adapter's firewall is what keeps the images out.	gevsharp-ipconfig.exe
CLI	discover, info, features, get, set, grab, regtest, and sim — an in-process device simulator to develop against with no hardware. Run it from the source tree: dotnet run --project samples/GevSharp.Cli -- discover	—

The two downloads are self-contained Windows x64 builds: one file, nothing to install, no .NET runtime needed. Both are Avalonia applications and build for Linux and macOS from the same source.

Logging

The library never writes logs itself. Attach a sink once at startup:

GevLog.Sink = (level, source, message, ex) => myLogger.Log(level, source, message, ex);

Integration with CvInspect

GevSharp has no OpenCV dependency by design. A thin adapter materializes GevFrame into a GC-owned CamFrame for CvInspect.Imaging; the adapter lives on the CvInspect side.

License

Apache-2.0. See THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md for attribution of adapted code.

"GigE Vision" is a registered trademark of the Association for Advancing Automation (A3). GevSharp is an independent project, is not affiliated with A3, and makes no compliance claim. "GenICam" is a trademark of the European Machine Vision Association (EMVA); GevSharp is not affiliated with EMVA. "GigE", "GVCP", "GVSP" and "GenICam" are used descriptively, to name the protocols and the description format this library speaks.