Installation on Windows¶

This section describes how to install the latest available Prophesee’s Software on Windows 10 64-bit.

Requirements¶

Please, note that the following requirements must be fulfilled:

Operating system: Windows 10 64-bit
Architecture: amd64 (a.k.a. x64)
Graphic card: must support OpenGL 3.0 minimum
CPU: must support AVX2 (see the list of processor supporting AVX2)

For other operating systems and architecture compatibilities, contact us.

Prerequisites¶

Removing Old Software¶

If you have previously installed any Prophesee’s software, you will need to uninstall it first:

Make sure that no Prophesee or Metavision software is running
Open the Start menu
Click Settings
Search for Apps & features via the search
In the list of installed programs, find any Prophesee or Metavision software and click the Uninstall button
Check that there is no Prophesee folder left in your Program Files folder (if still present, delete it)
If you previously compiled Metavision software from the source code, then remove the folder where you installed Metavision artifacts

Note

Removing the old version of Metavision software is mandatory even for patch upgrade (e.g. from 2.2.0 to 2.2.1)

Installing Dependencies¶

Install Python (version 3.7 or 3.8), if not yet available on your machine:

Download “Windows x86-64 executable installer” for one of these Python versions:
- Python 3.7
- Python 3.8
Run the installer and follow the prompt
We advise you to check the box to update the PATH or update the PATH manually with the following paths after replacing the Username to your own and using the Python version you installed (here, we assume that the install is limited to the local user and the default install path was used):
```
C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37
C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37\Scripts
```

Finally, install required Python libraries using pip. Open a command prompt and run the command:

pip install "numpy==1.19.5" opencv-python matplotlib jupyter pandas

Note

You can use Anaconda/Conda to install Python and manage your packages, but ensure to use a Python version that we support. In this documentation, we chose to use pip. If you wish to use Anaconda/Conda, adapt the library installation accordingly and use conda instead of pip.

Installation¶

Follow one of the following installation procedures depending on your chosen Metavision Intelligence Plan.

Warning

Metavision Essentials is a stand-alone evaluation version of Metavision Intelligence. It does not require to compile and install OpenEB. It comes as a pre-built Windows installer for OpenEB modules and the Python API of our Professional modules (see Metavision modules organization). It also includes the Prophesee Camera Plugins, making it the quickest way to get up to speed with event-based cameras and our SDK.

Installing Metavision Essentials¶

Go to the sign-up page for Metavision Essentials
Follow the Metavision Essentials download link provided after sign-up
Among the list of Essentials installers, download the one with highest version number (unless you want a specific patch version)
Run the installer

To use the Machine Learning module, you need to install some additional dependencies.

Note

When running Metavision applications, you may get the following error message: “Entry Point Not Found. The procedure entry point inflateValidate could not be located in the dynamic link library C:\Program Files\Prophesee\bin\libpng16.dll.” In this case, please check out the Troubleshooting section of our FAQ to fix the issue.

You are now ready to use Metavision. You may want to start by some visualization of data from an event-based camera with Metavision Player. Or you can choose to dive directly in the SDK by following a Tutorial or looking at a Code Sample.

Compiling OpenEB¶

OpenEB is the open source version or our code base for the modules Base, Core, Driver, UI, and HAL (see Metavision modules organization). You don’t need to compile it if you already installed Metavision Essentials as those modules are already included in the installers. But it is the way to go if you want to get a deeper understanding of event-based vision and start contributing to the community. To compile OpenEB on Windows, follow our compilation guide.

Compiling Metavision Professional¶

Metavision Professional provides the full source code of the modules you acquired.

To compile the source code:

Compile the OpenEB code base

Retrieve the source code of the acquired modules, go through their prerequisites and compile the modules together with the OpenEB code base:

Compiling Analytics module

Compiling Calibration module

Compiling CV module

Compiling CV3D module

Compiling ML module

Install Prophesee plugins if you plan to work with Prophesee cameras or data recordings:

If you acquired Prophesee plugins source code, extract it to the Metavision openeb folder and compile it along OpenEB and other Professional modules.

Otherwise, pre-compiled binaries of the Prophesee plugins should be delivered to you during Professional purchase. In that case, install them by running the Prophesee plugins installer.

(Optional) Compiling and running the test suite

Camera Plugins¶

Plugin libraries are distributed by camera makers.

Prophesee Plugins:

Can be retrieved in binary form, as part of Metavision Essentials. In this case, they are automatically found by Metavision HAL (no need to update environment variables)

Can be downloaded in binary form by signing-up to Prophesee Camera Plugins

Can be purchased in the source form; contact us for more details.

Third-party plugins can be retrieved from suppliers. If you installed a third-party vendor plugin, you need to specify the location of the plugin using the MV_HAL_PLUGIN_PATH environment variable. For example:

set "MV_HAL_PLUGIN_PATH=C:\path\to\my\plugins\"

Note

If you want to permanently set this environment variable, right click on your computer in the file browser and select properties. Then, click Advanced system settings in the left hand side bar and click Environment Variables. Finally, add the MV_HAL_PLUGIN_PATH variable in the System variables section.