Knowledge Base

Problem

The camera does not capture the full area of the behavioral apparatus (e.g., fear conditioning box). Part of the arena is cut off or outside the camera's field of view in EthoVision.

Details

This issue commonly occurs with Basler cameras when the camera's Area of Interest (AOI) or resolution settings have been reduced from their maximum values, or when the AOI is not centered. The reduced capture area means EthoVision only receives a cropped image. Settings must be corrected in Pylon Viewer and then synchronized in EthoVision.

Solution

1. **Close EthoVision** before making changes in Pylon Viewer (the two applications cannot share the camera simultaneously).
2. Open **Pylon Viewer** (Basler's camera configuration utility).
3. Select your camera and open the **Image Format Controls** section.
4. Set **Width** and **Height** to their maximum values (e.g., 1280 × 960 or the maximum supported by your camera model).
5. Under **AOI Controls**, enable **Center X** and **Center Y** to ensure the capture area is centered on the sensor.
6. Open **Configuration Sets** and save the current settings to **User Set 1**, then set **User Set 1** as the **Default Startup Set** so the settings persist after power cycling.
7. Close Pylon Viewer.
8. Open EthoVision and navigate to **Setup > Experiment Settings**.
9. In the camera/resolution settings, select the maximum resolution to synchronize EthoVision with the updated camera configuration.
10. Verify in the live camera preview that the full arena is now visible.