Configuration#
Windows#
To use ItalaApiNET the user should configure its tools to reference ItalaApiNET.dll
, which is located under Development\bin
.
The ItalaSDK installer creates an environment variable called ITALA_DEV which points to the Development
directory. If the tools used by the user allow it, the ITALA_DEV variable can be used for convenience.
The installer also adds to the system path the directories containing the binary files of ItalaApiNET, so that they can be used out-of-the-box.
Warning
If the user prevented the ItalaSDK installer from adding the DLLs to the system path, it must take care of manually placing the DLLs in the same folder of the executable linked to ItalaApiNET.
ItalaApiNET is available to the user code under the Itala
namespace. For example:
using Itala;
The current release targets Microsoft Windows machines with .NET 6 or higher. Using Microsoft Visual Studio comes naturally. The sample Visual Studio solution shows how projects can be configured to use the API. For hardware or network configuration instructions, please refer to the manual of the camera.
Example with Visual Studio 2022#
ItalaApiNET can be easily integrated into a project developed with Microsoft Visual Studio. The library can be addes as a Project Reference.
To do so, go to Project -> Add Project Reference… and from the Browse explorer select ItalaApiNET.dll
in your installation path.

Linux#
ItalaApiNET on Linux must be referenced manually. When using the dotnet
CLI program, ItalaApiNET.dll
can be referenced inside the .csproj file
of the user with the <HintPath>
tag.
ItalaApiNET.dll
depends on other shared libraries installed by ItalaSDK, which must be kept in the same folder.
For hardware or network configuration instructions, please refer to the manual of the camera.
IP Configurator#
To configure cameras network addresses a command line IP configurator is provided on Linux only. You can find the executable under /opt/itala-sdk/
.
To list all the available devices you can simply execute:
/opt/itala-sdk/itala-ipconfig list
To have a complete overview of the commands (staticip
, dhcp
, forceip
) available please execute it with --help
.
Firmware Updater#
To update the firmare a command line Firmware Updater is provided on Linux only. You can find the executable under /opt/itala-sdk/
.
To have a complete list of the available commands please execute the updater with --help
.
For instance: to list all the available devices you can simply execute:
/opt/itala-sdk/itala-fwupdate list
GenTL Producer#
A GenTL producer implementation (ItalaGenTL.cti file) is provided along with ItalaApiNET. The path of the producer is automatically added to the GENICAM_GENTL64_PATH variable so that GenTL consumers on the machine can use ItalaGenTL. Under Linux, the changes in the variable are effetive only after a new login of the user.
Device Emulation#
The Itala GenTL producer implementation provides a convenient way to experiment with its functionalities by emulating a simple camera, referred to as Virtual Camera This way, there is no need to have a physical device connected to the host. Despite the set of functionalities of the virtual camera is kept minimal, it’s sufficient to understand how the camera configuration and acquisition processes work.
To activate the virtual device functionality, a specific environment variable must be manually defined:
ITALA_VIRTUAL_CAMERA_COUNT = 2
The value of the variable states the number of virtual devices available on the host. Once the variable is set, the device can be enumerated and accessed in the usual way, both from GenTL and the API.
Warning
Due to the restricted set of of feature available Wizards and IP Configurator in Itala View are not supported.
Logging#
The logging functionality of ItalaApiNET is based on the Log4Cpp library and it can be activated by placing the logging configuration file logging.properties in the working directory of the user application.
The file is available in the Development\logging
folder under Windows and /opt/itala-sdk/logging
under Linux. By editing it (with the Log4Cpp syntax) the user
is able to customize the logging level, output and more.