msw flir

FLIR machine-vision camera capture via Bonsai workflows. Provided by the msw-flir-bonsai plugin, which registers a flir subcommand group with msw and also ships a standalone msw-flir console script with the same subcommands.

msw flir <command> [options]

The camera SDKs (FlyCapture2 / PyCapture2, or Spinnaker / PySpin) and Bonsai are Windows-only, so the hardware commands run on the Windows acquisition host.

Subcommands

Command	Description
find-bonsai	Scan known install locations and print the Bonsai.exe path
list-cameras	List connected FLIR cameras with index and serial number
run	Launch one Bonsai process per camera and record until stopped
test-record	Short single-camera test recording to verify the setup

find-bonsai

Searches the standard install locations and prints the first Bonsai.exe found. Copy the path into your setup YAML under cameras.bonsai_exe, or export it as the BONSAI_EXE environment variable.

msw flir find-bonsai

list-cameras

msw flir list-cameras [--driver flycap|spinnaker]

Flag	Default	Description
-d / --driver	flycap	Camera driver: flycap (FlyCapture2) or spinnaker (Spinnaker SDK)

Requires the matching SDK (PyCapture2 or PySpin) to be installed.

run

Launches N independent Bonsai camera processes (one per camera index) and blocks until every process exits or you press Ctrl+C.

msw flir run <output_dir> <session> [options]

Argument / flag	Default	Description
output_dir	(positional)	Root directory for video output
session	(positional)	Session name (used for folder/file naming)
-n / --n-cameras	1	Number of cameras to launch
-d / --driver	flycap	Camera driver: flycap or spinnaker
--fps	60	Target frame rate (FlyCapture only)
--bonsai-exe	$BONSAI_EXE	Path to Bonsai.exe
--workflow	run-flir-{driver}-1cam	Override the Bonsai workflow stem

Each camera writes to <output_dir>/<session>/<session>.cam<i>.

test-record

Runs a fixed-duration recording from a single camera — useful for confirming a camera index, frame rate, and output path before a real session.

msw flir test-record [--cam-index 0] [--driver flycap] [--fps 30] [--duration 5]

Flag	Default	Description
--output-dir	~/msw_flir_test	Output directory
--session	test	Session name
-c / --cam-index	0	Camera index (0-based)
--driver	flycap	flycap or spinnaker
--fps	30	Target frame rate
--duration	5.0	Recording duration in seconds
--bonsai-exe	$BONSAI_EXE	Path to Bonsai.exe

Examples

# Locate Bonsai and list attached cameras
msw flir find-bonsai
msw flir list-cameras --driver flycap

# Record two cameras for a session
msw flir run D:\DATA\video mouse001 --n-cameras 2 --fps 60

# Quick 5 s sanity check on camera 0
msw flir test-record --cam-index 0 --duration 5

See also

• Cameras