Has anyone had problems where the GUI cannot find the cmucam2.
I have twice. My problems were caused by a flaky serial cable the first time and the wrong serial port configuration the second. The baud rate was incorrect.
Did you ever grab a frame and then the picture became scrambled, and after that the program was no longer able to recognize the camera? That is what happened to ours.
My experience sound somewhat similar. I was trying to learn how to calibrate the camera by following the manual. I would get to the point of grabbing a frame, no problem. Then I would run a color calibration and the next image would come back with an extremely high level of that color washed over the entire image. Almost as though I had placed a colored filter in front of the lens. But on occasion, I would loose connection to the camera. The only way around it was to fully reset the camera. I never really got the thing working to my satisfaction.
I have worked on medical grade imaging systems for 20 years, all of it with pick-up tubes, except for the last three years when I began using CCD cameras and Digital Flat Panel detectors. My experience with CCD’s is quite limited, but from the little I have had, nothing I’ve used behaved anything like this. Now, I have to admit, the camera systems I worked on cost between $25K and $35K. So, there really is no comparing the two.
I would love to hear from teams that actually got the camera working as advertised and hear what they did to get the system working.
not sure how much of a difference it makes, but the cmucams use a cmos sensor rather than a ccd.
Well, my day is complete, I learned something new. Can I go home now? 
You’re right, I was not aware of that and I agree, it doesn’t make all that much difference.