  The Local Volume Mapper (LVM) project is one of three surveys that form the
Sloan Digital Sky Survey V. It will map the interstellar gas emission in a
large fraction of the southern sky using wide-field integral field
spectroscopy. Four 16-cm telescopes in siderostat configuration feed the
integral field units (IFUs). A reliable acquisition and guiding (A&G) strategy
will help ensure that we meet our science goals. Each of the telescopes hosts
commercial CMOS cameras used for A&G. In this work, we present our validation
of the camera performance. Our tests show that the cameras have a readout noise
of around 5.6e- and a dark current of 21e-/s, when operated at the ideal gain
setting and at an ambient temperature of 20{\deg}C. To ensure their performance
at a high-altitude observing site, such as the Las Campanas Observatory, we
studied the thermal behaviour of the cameras at different ambient pressures and
with different passive cooling solutions. Using the measured properties, we
calculated the brightness limit for guiding exposures. With a 5 s exposure
time, we reach a depth of around 16.5 Gaia gmag with a signal-to-noise ratio
(SNR)>5. Using Gaia Early Data Release 3, we verified that there are sufficient
guide stars for each of the around 25000 survey pointings. For accurate
acquisition, we also need to know the focal plane geometry. We present an
approach that combines on-chip astrometry and using a point source microscope
to measure the relative positions of the IFU lenslets and the individual CMOS
pixels to around 2 $\mu$m accuracy.
