VB6 with GigE cameras?

I am using Vision Devlopment Module 8.5 with VB6. I have written much code using activeX controls for 1394 firewire cameras. Are there VB6 activeX controls for GigE cameras? If so,can you put link here for examples. Thanks You
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Hi Dan,
The IMAQdx documentation indicates that it does have legacy MSVB6 support. Your camera should work with these examples as long as it meets the correct GigE or DCAM standards for working with IMAQdx, since this is still using our IMAQdx drivers.
I'm not sure about ActiveX support specifically for GigE cameras, but once you've connected to your camera with IMAQdx in VB6 I don't see why you shouldn't be able to use functions you were using before. I suggest you try modifying your existing code to connect with your GigE camera, and test the functionality of your ActiveX code.
Thank you,
Emily C
Applications Engineer
National Instruments

Similar Messages

Problems acquiring and saving multiple camera images using a switch with GigE cameras

Hi Folks,
We are having an issue with connecting 6 GigE cameras via an Ethernet switch. We can acquire and store individual cameras but once we increase the number of cameras we end up with jumpy avi files.
Each camera has been physically labelled and attached to the switch, so camera 1 is attached to port 1, which then corresponds to Cam1 in MAX. When recording multiple files what appears to happen is that the avi file from cam1 actually has images from multiple cameras, as if cam1 is being renamed/allocated on each frmae and each time a different camera is allocated. How can we fix this?
We are new to this so any help or advice would be much appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
Cathy
Attachments:
Camerad.png ‏60 KB
Camera.vi ‏91 KB

I think your problem is caused by using the same image name on each instance of Imaq create. "Grab and Save to AVI Acq" being the string you are using. I am pretty sure If you make each image name unique you wont get image referance problems.
Senior Software Engineer
www.Adansor.com

How can i make trigger with basler camera GIGE 659x494 - 70 FPS and I/O terminal block

Hi all,
How can i make trigger with basler camera GIGE 659x494 - 70 FPS and I/O terminal block

Frank,
If you are wiring an isolated power output to the EVS you will need to apply a power supply to the terminal block. This is mentioned in the "wiring isolated power output" section of the EVS getting started guide located here. The guide references the EVS user manual which provides a pinout of the d-ub connector in table 2-11 of the manual located here. For more information on the camera settings you need to set on the Basler camera please see the user manual of the camera you refrenced here.
To provide power to the camera you can purchase a power cable for the camera. Rather than a power cable, since you want to also do triggering, you will want a Trigger and I/O Cable instead which is part number 779985-01 as seen on this product page. The I/O cable would allow you to wire the trigger lines to the terminal block as well as the power lines.
David A
National Instruments
FlexRIO Product Support Engineer

Drop frame rate when start saving avi file with GigE basler camera

Hello all,
I use 2 Ace basler GigE cameras at 60 fps to capture animal locomotion. I experience randomly this kind of problem. When I start to record by a start/stop button and save the videos in the hard-disk sometime the frame rate drop to 20-14 fps and a skip 2 or 3 frame. After that the frame rate became stable to 60 fps.
These are the overall settings and spec of the program:
- I use a producer/consumer loop (I never experienced a filling of the queue even when the drop frame rate occur)
- I fixed the bandwidth of the Intel 100 GigE card to 500 for each camera
- size of packet sent = 8000
- firewall disabled
- vi execution in highest mode
I observed that the dropping of the frame rate occur when the vi run for a while without interaction with the operator (the operator set others parameters in another computer, so the vi only acquire the videos without saving them)
I have attached the vi
Thank you for your help
Alex
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Attachments:
GRAB 2 CAM SAVE AVI TTL SEND C-P LOOP 0.1.vi ‏151 KB

Alex,
Does this drop in frame rate occur with both cameras or does it only occur with the "left" or "right" camera acquisition loops. I think what is happening is that your producer loop is overwriting the images before they get written to the AVI. In addition there may be some memory conflicts as queues are generally not recommended for IMAQ Images. Here is an explanation stating that instead of enqueuing an Image Object you are actually enqueuing a memory location to an image. This means that when you produce a new image it is writing to the same memory location you are trying to read from when you write the frame to AVI. This forum offers a possible workaround.
Regards,
Isaac S.
Applications Engineer
National Instruments

Triggering GigE Camera with Hardware Trigger

Hello,
Here is an outline of what I want to accomplish:
-LabView program starts running and waits for GigE camera to output frames
-Hardware trigger leads to GigE camera outputting frames
-Some simple arithmetic is done on each frame to generate the average pixel value--> this average value is plotted for each frame
-Repeat the above three steps
Please see the attached VI. I have successfully set my camera's settings in MAX to make it wait for an external hardware trigger. However, the output of IMAQdx Grab2.vi inside the While Loop is only a single frame (even though in MAX I have set the Acquisition Mode to MultiFrame - 255 Frames).
Any help would be appreciated!
Thank You.
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Attachments:
ImageGrab.vi ‏57 KB

The "problem" that you are having is the frame rate of video acquisition, which you think is about 20 Hz. Take the very simple VI I posted and run it with your camera -- all it does is continuously take frames (and display them) -- does this have an acceptable rate? I suspect it will.
If so, then "start with what works and add to it", rather than trying to "fix what is broken". First, let's consider how to (better) control the Start and Stop of frame acquisition. I like your idea of using the 6009, but I recommend (if you are using a 3V signal as the trigger) that you wire the trigger to one of the Digital I/O ports (as 0 and 3V are acceptable TTL levels for False and True).
Your Video loop will be "clocked" by the Camera at its frame rate, so you might consider using the same loop to clock the DIO. Take a Digital sample of the line to which you've wired your TTL signal, and as long as it is True, run the loop. [You'll need to think about how to get the loop started ...]. It should, I think, be possible to read from your USB 6009 within a 60th of a second -- if it is too slow, there are other ways of handling this with a separate parallel loop, but let's not go there until we see it is a problem.
So now, in principle, you've gone from a simple loop showing frames at 60 Hz to a loop controlled by a TTL signal showing frames at 60 Hz. All we need now is to process those frames.
Here is where you want to use a Consumer/Producer pattern -- you don't want to do processing inside this loop (because the loop cannot run faster than all of its parts, taken together, and if you are processing incoming data, you have to get the data, then do the processing). Instead, you have have two loops running in parallel -- the Producer loop acquiring the videos, and then "exporting" them to a Consumer loop that processes them.
Are you familiar with this pattern? There are numerous examples around (look in File/New/From Template/Framework/Design Patterns, and at some of the Sample Projects). It uses a Queue, with data put onto the Queue by the Producer and removed by the Consumer. You might need to increase the number of buffers for your camera, but you should be able to do quite a bit of processing in 1/60 of a second.
Bob Schor

Simultaneous capture with usb and gige cameras ?

Hi,
I am unable to capture (continuously) simultaneously from a USB and a GigE camera, is there a limitation in Labview ? Both cameras work if I use them one at a time. I am using Labview 2012. Both cameras are IMAQdx devices and I am using IMAQdx VIs.
Thanks,
Best,
Saumil

I have just converted to low level, just in case. Not tested yet...
USB camera: USB 2.0, 10 frames/sec, 1280x1024 -> about 13 MBytes/sec
GigE camera: 300 frames/sec, 640x480 -> about 90 MBytes/sec
So both cameras data rates are within their respective interface limits. Although when I started to archive raw frames from the USB camera, everything in labview became super slow. The slowness was reduced dramatically once I started storing to compressed AVI files (rates went from 15 Mbytes to approx. 1.5 Mbytes/sec). I have not tested archival with the GigE camera yet, I am expecting troubles, just dont know how severe.
Thanks for your help,
Saumil

GigE camera - grab image with black bars

Hi everyboby,
I am using Ni vision acquisition to grab images from a GigE camera.
I recieve images just as I trigger the camera - so fare so good.
Every other picture shows some black bars.
Does anyone has an idea what it could be?
It's not the hardware, the camera works perfect with the SDk form the manufacturer.
Thanx for any help
Solved!
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Sounds like an incomplete frame, this could be caused by missing packets. To prevent missing packets during acquisition you can do two key things: ensure the packet size configured on the camera does not exceed what the network adapter can handle, and ensure that the bandwidth of image data being output by the camera does not saturate interface bandwidth. I would lower camera packet size to 1500 initially to determine if the packet size is the cause of the problem. You can throttle how much data the camera can send by manipulating the interpacket delay, some manufacturers have a very handy feature called StreamBytesPerSecond. Depending on which mechanism you can use, increase interpacket delay or reduce StreamBytesPerSecond.

Can flash app work with GigE ethernet Camera?

Hi there,
Have anyone have similiar experience work with GigE ethernet camera with flash app?
recently need to test high resolution with high fps such as 1600x1200 @60 fps work with flash application or it required to via other C#/delphi/C++ programming to work together?
In windows xp environment
all GigE are connected local , not to internet server.
this product looks like fit my need :prosilica GX1660
please be advised,
Vossler

The best way you can go in my opinion is developing a java application that connects and controls the camera, then you can use merapi to call java functions
Merapi is a Java-AS3 bridge (http://merapiproject.net/)

How to do a simultaneous snap from two GigE cameras?

I have 2 Basler Scout 780-54gm cameras (monochrome GigE) that I am triggering externally at 10 Hz. This frame rate is modest and the resulting data rate is not particularly high. I would like to get images from both cameras from the same trigger pulse. I have an Intel Pro/1000 NIC and I am using the NI driver that shows up as National Instruments GigE Vision Adapter. When I use the Basler Pylon Viewer (the software that comes with the cameras) I can see perfect images from both cameras at the same time at 10 Hz. This tells me that the network, NIC and drivers can handle the data rate with no problem. I have jumbo frames enabled.
When I try to acquire images into LabVIEW 8.6 with IMAQdx vis, though, I run into problems. I can acquire from each camera alone, but I can't get both at the same time cleanly. The images are shot through with black horizontal lines that appear and move erratically. I have attached a vi that shows the problem. I configure and start both acquisitions, then enter a while loop which reads the images. If I do the acquisitions sequentially by starting and stopping them inside the loop and making sure that one stops before the other starts then I get high-quality images but they are not from the same trigger pulses, and the overhead of starting and stopping the acuisitions slows things down so that I can't get images from every trigger.
My guess is that this is a problem with the way LabVIEW is managing memory, resulting in corruption with simultaneous acquisitions. Are there any settings I can change to cure this problem? I have experimented with everything that I know about, but no success yet.
Attachments:
Two GigE Grabs standalone.vi ‏50 KB

Hi Richard:
You should put the tick count function in a sequence structure in order to make the loop timing consistent each iteration, but what are you receiving as a loop time? If it's operating in less than 100ms, it shouldn't be the software that's affecting the images.
One other thing you can try is to get rid of the error wire between your Get Image VIs. This will keep the program from forcing a delay by executing the functions one at a time.
Alex Person
NI-RIO Product Support Engineer
National Instruments

Trying to detect GigE camera(TM-1405GE) in MAX

My company recently bought a new camera. It is the TM-1405GE by pulnix. This camera is a GigE camera and I have already installed the software that comes with the camera and can aquire images with that software. My problem is that when I try to use labview or MAX I cannot detect the camera. Under the software section of MAX it says I have IMAQdx software but under the Devices and Interfaces folder there is no NI-IMAQdx Devices tab. I have also tried just righting a simple VI using IMAQdx to aquire an image but the camera isn't being detected. Any suggestion would be much appreciated.

Well, MAX is the place to look for the cameras.
We had issues with Dalsa cams and I kept nagging with the local reseller until it was fixed. The problem was that the camera wasn't fully GigE compliant, the same be with yours.
See here for more info
Maybe you have to switch the camera for another software backend?
Ton
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Multiple channels from GigE camera

Hello NI Folks,
I am using a GigE camera for my Machine Vision application. I have to save data from all three channels coming out of Camera.
I am using Example VI from National Instruments 'Grab and Setup attributes.vi' to get attributes and save Image. But the problem is this example VI has capability only to grab data from one channel. Anyone please give an idea for Which part of thIS example VI should I edit to grab all the three channels ??
I checked this issue even in MAX. I selected all three channels in MAX and tried to take a snap from camera, but there is only one image captured, there is no option in MAX to view all three channels. I am attaching the MAX scrrenshot below which shows all the channels from my GigE are activated
How to make Labview to read all the three channels from camera ??
Regards
Neo.

Hello Mr.Alexander Glasner,
This is the camera I am using
http://www.automationtechnology.de/cms/index.php?id=243&L=1
It is used for Laser triangulation technique. this camera gives out 3D data in one channel, Intensity data in other channel, grey scale Image in third channel. All these these channels comes out ofcamera through a single Gigabit Ethernet.Camera manufacture provided a software with which streaming of desired channels is possible. But I want to do it in Labview. Is there any block in IMAQ library to isolate these channels from GigE Interface ?
My point with MAX is, MAX is able to grab all the attributes including its channels names DC0,DC1,DC2. But it is not able to display three channels seperately when selected.
Regards
Neo

Gige Camera slow initialization

I 'm using a Aviiva EM1 GigE camera with Labview 2011. I insalled the latest Imaqdx driver. I can acquire without problems images. However the initialization of the camera takes about 38 sec with Max or Imaqdx Open. When using Gevplayer (Pleora) it takes only 10 seconds. What can I do to speed up the initialzation in Labview ?
Regards

Hey,
how about your network settings and all. have you enabled Jumbo frames? If yes, then there must be an incompatiblity of both ev2 and LabVIEW.
Sasi.
Certified LabVIEW Associate Developer
If you can DREAM it, You can DO it - Walt Disney

Triggering a GigE camera

Newbie question for you all. Hope this makes sense:
At the moment, we are using a Dalsa area scan camera and a NI PCI-1424 frame-grabber with a parallel digital interface. We use LabVIEW and IMAQ software. Our software creates an IMAQ session that sits and waits for a single external trigger on the PCI-1424 board. When it receives the trigger, we acquire a series of frames at a given frame rate.
Now we want to upgrade the whole system and are considering a GigE camera from Basler (Pioneer piA640-210gm). If decide to do this, how would we configure the triggering?
I noticed that NI's GigE board (PCIe-8231) does not have any trigger inputs. So I guess the only way to trigger the acquisition is to use the camera's trigger input? But that doesn't even seem possible. The user manual on the camera indicates that external triggering is used when you have a pulse train that triggers every frame. We want the camera to wait for just one rising-edge which then triggers a pre-determined acquisition that is setup in the software. Any ideas how to do that with GigE?
Also, we use NI-IMAQ software right now. If we upgrade to GigE, then we are going to have to totally re-write our software to use NI-IMAQdx, right?
- John

Hi John,
With Firewire and GigE cameras the triggering is generally* done on the camera rather than the interface into the PC. The reasoning is that the interfaces into the PC do not have low-latency, deterministic methods to trigger the camera except via a separate external trigger wire linking the PC and camera. (*With Firewire since you are bound to the distance limits of the bus, it is generally easy to make this connection than GigE). NI does sell products like the 8255R (a firewire interface combined with reprogrammable I/O suitable for use with triggering cameras via an external cable, but there is no device that combines this functionality with GigE ports (but no reason why you can't combine with a separate GigE network card). However, as I'll desribe below, GigE Vision has its own tricks that reduce/eliminate the need for this...
With the triggering moved to the camera, it is up to the camera vendor to decide the complexity the triggering methods they implement. On GigE Vision cameras, because they use GenICam XML files to allow the cameras to self-describe their features, any capabilities the camera manufacturer can dream up will be exposed through the driver. We are starting to see GigE cameras on the market with very complex triggering capabilities (including built-in pulse-generation capabilities, complex input and output interactions, etc) that can rival features on many framegrabbers. You can configure all of these features within MAX or your application just like you can control any other feature of the camera. Note that while there is flexibility to implement any feature desired, there is a "Standard Features Naming Convention" that, among other things, includes complex triggering definitions. This list aims to ensure that cameras that implement the same features (such as common triggering modes) use the same names and behavior for their features.
As to whether the Basler Pioneer will support what you want, I am unsure. I checked the triggering capability here: http://www.baslerweb.com/downloads/17785/pioneer_manual.pdf. According to their docs, they support an "AcquisitionStart" trigger, meaning you should be able to trigger the start of a single-frame, multi-frame, or continuous acquisition when that trigger comes in (and the source can be varied, including external I/O pins). However, I tried this on a Basler Scout that we have and only a single frame was generated in this mode when triggered via a software trigger. Its possible I have an earlier firmware that is behaving incorrectly, but in theory the Basler camera should be able to do what you want if they named it correctly. I would confirm the expected behavior with Basler to be certain. As I mentioned, there should be plenty of other cameras on the market that do support this triggering mode if the Basler does not.
With regards to re-writing your software for IMAQdx, its true that you would have to make the translation from IMAQ code. However, the API's are very similar for most things and code porting shouldn't be too bad.
Please let me know if you have any more questions regarding this,
Eric G

NI VBAI GigE Camera Lost Packets

We are running VBAI on a fast PC through an Intel Pro/1000 card and a jumbo-frame GigE switch to a large number of Basler Ace GigE cameras.
It is understandable that multiple cameras can not simultaneously transfer complete images to the PC at the full 1000 MHz data rate due to the limited bandwith between the PC and switch.
One way around this is to throttle the max data rate for each camera down so that the sum is not greater than 1000 MHz.
However, this means that image transfers always take longer, even if only one camera happens to be in operation much of the time.
Is this a fundamental limitation of GigE Vision, or are GigE Vision cameras clever enough to operate as fast as possible...via resends of the occasional lost packet???
Nelson

We have come up with a solution.
The issue is that the cameras, switch, network card, and VisionBuiilder cannot handle any instance where more than one camera is sending images to VisionBuilder where the total of the data rates for those cameras is ever in excess of the 1GB network card bandwidth.
(It would be nice if someone made a network switch that has slightly more packet buffer memeory...100MB?...so that the occasional collision does not result in garbage images while allowing most captures to operate at maximum speed.)
Solution:
(1) We added 3 additional 1Gb network ports to our vison pc.
(2) In order to redistribute camera traffic to more than one network port, we assigned each network card, and the corresponding cameras, to a different subnet.
(3) We lowered the data rate for the less time-critical cameras.
Even after lowering the data rates for several cameras in NI-MAX down to 200 Mb/s such that lost packets should no longer be possible, we stil saw them.
After a detailed examination we found that the VisionBuilder image acquisition steps do not pay attention the the data rates that you assign in NI-MAX, and alwasy default to the maximum 1000 Mb/s rate, hence the saturated data rates and lost packets.
The solution to this problem turns out to be to explicity set the desired data rate in each VisionBuilder Image Acquistion step, using the attributes tab. While you are at it, you should also check that other critical parameters, such as the packet size, are also correct, and update them if not.
After explicitly correcting the data rates in all image acquisition steps, we ran an image capture stress test that ran all the vision processes (several programs running simultaneously) about 10x faster than required, and observed no lost packets at all.
Problem solved.

GigE cameras

Hi, I'm having some troubles managing 4 cameras, two are firewire and two are GigE. I have no problems running my program with HIGHLIGHT EXECUTION, but if I run it in a continuously way the next error appears: 0XBFF69002 "Invalid Parameter" and no image is displayed with one of the GigE camera. This only occurs with one of the GigE Camera, the other ones, work perfectly.
Anybody can help me, I will appreciate your time...
Regards...

   Ok, sorry about the brief explanation. The cameras I have connected is a DALSA cam (GigE), a Marlin cam (FireWire), a Guppy cam (FireWire) and a JAI cam (GigE). I can see every camera in the MAX, the one I have problems is the DALSA cam. But, just as I was describe it, if I run my program with highlight execution, my program works, in a slowly way, but it works, if I run it in a continuosly way, the program sends me that error...
   I don't have the file right here, I could upload on Monday 13th, but the program flows is as follows: 1st I check the number of cameras connected, I create folders for every camera connected, and then, I start the while loop where I open a session cam, then configure, then take a snap and save it into its folder and then I close session. I make a sweepping between all connected cameras. The program ends when an error occurs or when I press STOP button.
   It's very simple, as you can see, but I have this problem. The configuration of the cameras were adjusted, the frame speed in DALSA is 150 fps, in the other ones is faster (near 8000), the snaps are from 1024 x 780 and every camera has its own configuration about the type of the snap (RGB 32, or Grayscale) as I need it...
   Thank you for your time... =)

VB6 with GigE cameras?

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