Maximum number of Select Images/Vision Assistants

Question

Hardware:         CVS 1454
Two cameras:   AVT Guppy F036C
MAX Settings   
        680x480 Y (Mono 8) 15fps
        Speed: 400MBs
        Packet Size: 680bytes 
        Gamma Off
        Bayer Pattern: BGBG_GRGR
Connection:      Using two firewire cables directly to the CVS
Software:          Vision Builder 2010 and Vision Builder 2009
       I recently started to create a Inspection in VB2010. When I press "Run Inspection Once" button, it would lose connection with the CVS.  I watched the free memory in MAX and it went from 32MBs to 3MBs before it would lose connection. I simplified my Inspection to use fewer states, eliminated most of the variables in an attempt to use less memory. I put the camera settings as low as possible in MAX. Eventually I got it to stop losing connection to the CVS.
       Now that I could go through the states after it went through one iteration I saw that one or both of the Acquire Images would fail. Especially if I went into Inspection Interface and back to Configuration Interface. I figured it was a memory limitation since the CVS 1454 only has 128MBs, 96 of which is occupied by VB2010. I got another CVS, formatted it, and installed VB2009 since it had 44MBs of free memory.
       In VB2009 I put all of the test steps into one long state. The program has:
              two acquire steps in one state
              two states for creating ROIs(one state for each image) for a total of 2 Select Images
              a test state which has two Select Image steps, one vision assistant, along with other test steps
       If I add one more select image or one more vision assistant those steps will simply fail to do anything. The inspection manages to finish running but anything involving that final Select Image/Vision Assistant will not work.
Has anyone else experience a limitation to the number of select images or vision assistant steps they can use? I have a working inspection now but I need to be aware of the limitations as I try to make more robust Inspections.
Is it a problem with the amount of user space in the CVS 1454 or is there just a limited number of pointers in the VB code that limits the number of references that can be made?

Answer 1

My bet is you're just too close to the memory limit on that device. A quick test would be to just acquire images from your camera(s) without any Vision Assistant/processing steps and make sure this works for long periods of time without problems. Use the same cameras, and triggering settings to make it as close The Vision Assistant steps make a copy of the image (as well as Threshold). You can use the Select Image step to see which steps create a copy of the image. If you are really dead set on the CVS, you could try replacing the steps that make a copy of the image with a Run LabVIEW VI that does the same same functionality and minimize the copies you do in the Run LV code. This should save you your image size x the number of processing steps you can replace with Run LabVIEW. You're kind of at the edge of what the HW can do, so I wouldn't normally recommend this, but if you're desperate and don't want to upgrade HW, you could try using Run LV to help do several of the steps in VBAI that are making copies of the image.
Hope this helps,
Brad