Prepare your Vicon Tracker system

Tracker is part of the fully integrated and expandable Vicon system that lets you build an architecture best suited to your motion capture application.

It is assumed that your Tracker system hardware components are connected to a power supply, and that Tracker is installed and licensed.

If you're installing your Tracker system yourself, see any Vicon documentation that was supplied with your hardware and Installing and licensing Vicon Tracker. If you need further help, please contact Vicon Support.

In the following topology diagram, Tracker is installed on the host PC.

Tracker system architecture

The following diagram shows an example of a Tracker system with up to 80 Vicon Valkyrie cameras and a Vicon Lock Lab for connecting analog devices.

In a system that requires more than one Ethernet switch:

• To ensure correct synchronization of your system, you must either:
  • Connect a Lock to the switch that is connected to the PC, known as the primary switch. (This can be via a Lock power switch, as shown in the above example.); or
  • Ensure that a camera connected to the primary switch is selected in the Vicon application software to be the Sync Source.
  In the above example, the Lock is the sync source and is connected via a Lock power switch to a data switch. For more about the switches in a Valkyrie system see the Switches in Valkyrie systems section of the Understand when additional switches are required page found in the Vicon Valkyrie Reference Guide.
• If a camera is the sync source (the one that outputs the Vicon Ethernet sync packet), ensure it is connected to the primary switch.
• Up to 8 Valkyrie cameras can connect to the power switch and up to 10 power switches can connect to the data switch.

Remember that, when you connect switches, one port is taken on each switch in connecting the two, as shown in the above example.

Tracker system components

You can include the following components in a Vicon Tracker system architecture:

For further details of these components, see the Vicon Systems Setup Guide in the Setup & Connectivity documentation.

Vicon Tracker checks for supported Vicon devices before allowing connection. If your system contains non-supported devices, when you start Tracker, it displays a message alerting you to the incompatibility and asks you to disconnect incompatible devices.

Connect cameras

To connect cameras into your Vicon system, you must specify the correct IP address for the network port that is connected to the PoE switch.

For legacy videos that show you how to mount your cameras, see the Installation tutorials in the Tracker 3 Tutorials playlist on YouTube.

To connect the cameras:

1. Connect the PoE switch to the PC.
2. Access the Windows network connections:
   
   • Open the Control Panel, then click Network and Internet and on the right side of the panel, under Network and Sharing Center, click View Network Status and Tasks; or
   • Click the Network and Sharing Center icon on the right of the Windows toolbar and then click Open Network and Sharing Center.
3. Right-click on the network card connected to PoE or Giganet and then click Properties.
4. In the Properties window, select TCP/IP.
5. Click the Properties button.
6. In the Properties window, click the Use the Following IP Address radio button.
7. Enter the following IP address: – 192.168.10.1.
8. Enter the following Subnet Mask – 255.255.255.0.
9. Click OK.

For more information, see also Configuring network card settings.

Start Tracker

When you install Tracker, a Vicon Tracker shortcut appears on your Windows desktop (and an entry is added to the Windows Start menu).

Depending on the options selected during installation, you may also see an icon for Vicon Firmware Manager.

To start Tracker:

1. Double-click the Vicon Tracker shortcut.

2. Ensure the System panel is visible.

   

   Tip: If you can't see the System panel, one way to display it is to select the Default view.
   To do this, on the right of the menu bar, click View Settings and then select Default.

   From this panel, you monitor and control devices connected to the software.

Windows power options monitoring

When you first start Tracker, you may see a warning icon on the right side of the menu bar, like this:

This icon indicates that the current power plan is set to favor power savings over performance. The power-saving features of Windows can significantly reduce Tracker's performance and increase output latency, depending on the power plan that is chosen and the processor support for power-saving features.

For more information and access to the Power Options in the Windows Control Panel, click the icon.

For best performance, choose the High performance plan (or a plan created from the High Performance plan).

Save system settings

When you have finished setting up your system, you can save your current settings so that you can re-use them in future. The settings that are saved include all device settings, system-wide settings (eg, frame rate), as well as processing parameters.

To save your current Tracker settings:

1. On the right of the Tracker menu bar, click System Settingsand then select Manage.

2. In the Manage System Settings dialog box, click the Save button and enter a name for your saved configuration.

The next time you need to reload your settings, you can select the saved configuration by clicking System Settings again and selecting your saved configuration.

Enable Tracker to track objects

Objects define a pattern of markers that Tracker can locate from camera centroid detections.

To enable tracking of objects, you must create objects in Tracker for each physical object that you want to track.

For more information, see Work with objects.