topic Re: USB DRIVER FOR IMAQ in LabVIEW

USB DRIVER FOR IMAQ

Vision-USB — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 15:11:00 GMT

Hello,

I have one CreativeLabs Webcam Live ! The webcam driver is told to be

compatible with Microsoft DirectShow. After starting the Vision Assistant,

the system display a message "incorrect settings for the camera". Does

anyone have a sugestion ? The camera is working normally with the

manufacturer software.

THX !

Re: USB DRIVER FOR IMAQ

Brooks W. — Fri, 02 Dec 2005 18:06:41 GMT

Hi,
I am assuming that you have a USB webcam. If so, you will not be able to use this with the Vision Assistant. Here is a portion of the Vision Assistant help below.

You can acquire live images in Vision Assistant if you have one of the following device and driver software combinations:

National Instruments IMAQ device and NI-IMAQ 3.0 or later
IEEE 1394 industrial camera and NI-IMAQ for IEEE 1394 Cameras 1.5 or later

Do you have LabVIEW? If so, then you can acquire images through most usb cameras. You will need the USB camera VI's which you can download from:
http://venus.ni.com/stage/we/niepd_web_display.DISPLAY_EPD4?p_answer=&p_guid=ED6942DF78E34659E034080020E74861&p_node=DZ52490&p_rank=&p_source=Internal&p_submitted=N

Please note that while NI-IMAQ for USB Cameras comes with complete documentation, it is not supported by National Instruments Applications Engineers.

Best Regards,
Brooks W.
National Instruments

Re: USB DRIVER FOR IMAQ

Underflow — Fri, 02 Dec 2005 20:16:31 GMT

External link

Re: USB DRIVER FOR IMAQ

Vision-USB — Sat, 03 Dec 2005 21:37:12 GMT

Brooks,

Thanks for your time on answering my question about USB camera.

Your assumption is correct. I have a CreativeLabs Webcam Live!

According to NI-IMAQ USB Driver Guide, this driver support Webcams,

the guide asks for launching Vision Assistant and select Acquire Image

option. That is exactly when I got the message "The settings for this camera

are not valid" message.

Yes , I have LABVIEW 7.1 (student version) installed on my PC.

Last but not least, I am afraid I could not understand your statement that

I will not be able to use Vision Assistan , why not ? This Webcam according to

CreativeLabs does support DirectShow and this is what NI asks to IMAQ USB

Driver works. If you could please make additional comments I will greatly appreciate

them.

Regards,

Guilherme

Re: USB DRIVER FOR IMAQ

alipio — Sun, 04 Dec 2005 16:59:09 GMT

Hi Guilherme

See this link:http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=200&message.id=7317&view=by_threading&page=1

There have been quite a lot of discussions about the subject.

You can use most webcams under vision assistant and vision development, but there are some problem with languajes.

Hope it helps

Alipio

Re: USB DRIVER FOR IMAQ

Brooks W. — Mon, 05 Dec 2005 20:17:37 GMT

Hi Guilherme,
Since you have the NI-IMAQ USB driver, and the camera supports Direct Show filters, then you should be able to use it with Vision Assistant. Unfortunately, NI Application Engineers don't support the NI-IMAQ USB driver. However, I will try to help you troubleshoot this problem.

Have you tried acquiring images through LabVIEW using the USB driver? Does that work?

What OS are you using?

Best Regards,
Brooks W.
National Instruments

Re: USB DRIVER FOR IMAQ

Vision-USB — Sun, 11 Dec 2005 13:13:58 GMT

Brooks,

Thanks for your pro-active attitude on helping me with my USB issues.

I believe that the underlying issue of my problem is to identify how to set-up my camera settings

(assuming that there is no language issues) once CREATIVELABS states that its WEBCAM Live !

supports Microsoft DirectShow Driver Capabilities. I am not sure if I understood your suggestion

to use LABVIEW for acquiring the images without the aid of Vision Assistant, what could be the

difference that could make one working and the other don't ?

My OS is Windows XP with SP2 ( Portuguese Version ).

Thanks,

Guilherme

Re: USB DRIVER FOR IMAQ

alipio — Sun, 11 Dec 2005 18:08:00 GMT

Hi
You can be quite positive the problem is a language dependency one.
As I know for other posts and for my home PC, IMAQ USB from NI does not work in xp sp2 in spanish, german... etc. It works in english only. Fails are in vision asistant and plane vision.
Try xp sp2 englis or your native language in xp sp1.

Cheers
Alipio

Re: USB DRIVER FOR IMAQ

Vision-USB — Sun, 11 Dec 2005 18:20:01 GMT

Alipio,

Thank you for your inputs and informations. I hope some fellow from NI (Brooks could be the one)

could do extra investigations, why Windows XP SP2 has languages issues with this NI USB driver

and with SP1 works fine, no matter language you are using ?

Brooks is this a known issue for you ?

THX !

Guilherme

Re: USB DRIVER FOR IMAQ

Brooks W. — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 14:48:17 GMT

Hi Guilherme,
The Direct Show driver for USB cameras returns language specific strings for certain functions. There are some hard coded English strings used in the driver when looking for a "Capture" pin. Apparently on non-English OS's, the driver returns the capture pin string in the OS language, so the english string isn't found. I don't see how this would be any different for XP SP1.

Alipio,
Have you seen the USB driver work on XP SP1 with a non-english OS?

Best Regards,
Brooks W.
National Instruments

Re: USB DRIVER FOR IMAQ

alipio — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 18:22:46 GMT

Hi Brooks
Yes. It works in my work PC (XP pro SP1 spanish) vision assiatant and vision. Lv7.1 and 8.

It does not work in XP sp2 german or spanish. It does work in XP sp2 english.
So I am quite positive there is some language dependency in sp2 that is not compatible with Ni imaq for USB.
Actually, I will had to go back to sp1 to be able to keep using Ni Imaq for USB.
I am not the first one to detect this problem. There are posts in machine vision forum about the subjet.

Cheers
Alipio

Re: USB DRIVER FOR IMAQ

Brooks W. — Tue, 13 Dec 2005 17:00:27 GMT

Hi Guilherme,
I am working with R&D to try to find answers for this issue. I will post back when I have an answer from them.

Best Regards,
Brooks W.

Re: USB DRIVER FOR IMAQ

alipio — Tue, 13 Dec 2005 18:00:59 GMT

Hi
See attached doc whit errors under XP pro SP2 spanish.
Hope it helpd R&D peple to track de issue.
Cheers
Alipio

Re: USB DRIVER FOR IMAQ

Vision-USB — Wed, 14 Dec 2005 14:52:53 GMT

Brooks,

Thank you very much for your support. Although this driver is not supported

by NI engineering Staff, I am sure it will benefit a lot of Vision practioners with

small budget.

THX !

****************

Alipio,

You are really doing a very good job to our Vision Comunity , providing good NI fellows

like Brooks with good informations and feedback about your experience using NI IMAQ

USB driver.

Cheers,

Guilherme

Re: USB DRIVER FOR IMAQ

Brooks W. — Wed, 14 Dec 2005 16:14:24 GMT

Hi Guilherme,
We are happy to assit our customers in any way that we can.

I have talked to R&D about this issue and they are aware of it and are going to implement a fix. However, there is no defined timeline as to when the fix will be issued. In the mean time the options are:
1. Roll back to SP1
2. Go to an Italian, Japanese, French, or English OS. These languages have work with the NI-IMAQ for USB driver.

Hope this helps!

Brooks W.
National Instruments

Re: USB DRIVER FOR IMAQ

Brad — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 15:05:48 GMT

We just put together a way to easily add support for new OSes for the USB driver. Once you have the NI-IMAQ for USB driver installed (it is recommended to use version 1.1.0 put on the web 1-4-2006), rename the ImaqDirectShowDll.dll located in your system directory (C:\windows\system32\) and replace it with the DLL that is attached. Then run a shipping example (C:\Program Files\National Instruments\LabVIEW x.x\examples\imaq\imaqUSB examples.llb) A popup dialog will appear with a string. Please send a screen shot of the first dialog box to support@ni.com with an email title of IMAQ USB Foreign OS String and what OS you are using.

You can replace the ImaqDirectShowDll.dll with the original to get back the original behavior...within a few days/weeks an updated version of the driver will be available with support for your OS.

We have also recently added the ability to set the resolution of the camera programmatically to a supported video mode of the camera without using a popup dialog box. The driver that has this feature is now available on the web. Upgrading to version 1.1.0 which has this feature should break existing code, but the IMAQ USB Init will have an additional input to allow you to specify which video you want to acquire with.

Hope this helps,

Brad

Re: USB DRIVER FOR IMAQ

alipio — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 17:21:59 GMT

Hi Brad
Once more, outstanding support from NI.
Thanks.
This things ( since IMAQ usb is not oficially supported by NI) makes a company to be a leader and its users to be sure they will have a true and real help and support.

Alipio

Re: USB DRIVER FOR IMAQ

TCPlomp — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 08:27:59 GMT

Good thing!

Does this happen to more drivers ( I notice the TDM plugin for Excel isn't international...)

But anyway I submitted the Dutch version (XPSP2)

Ton

Message Edited by TonP on 01-13-2006 09:29 AM

Re: USB DRIVER FOR IMAQ

TCPlomp — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 09:28:23 GMT

So is submittd via email like Brooks suggested. And it returned with the question to submit on the forums so I will display my error code here.

This is the dutch code on windows XP SP2:
V.a.s.t.l.e.g.g.e.n.

Message Edited by TonP on 01-13-2006 10:33 AM

Message Edited by TonP on 01-13-2006 10:35 AM

Re: USB DRIVER FOR IMAQ

Brad — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 16:01:52 GMT

Here is an updated DLL with support for Norwegian and Dutch...I will update the Example Program soon, but wanted to get as many languages in before I update the web link....make sure you have installed the latest NI-IMAQ USB (version 1.1.0) before replacing the DLL in the windows/system32 directory with this one.

Hope that helps,

Brad