Do I need LabVIEW RT for a simple 10objects/sec image acquisition/processing?

[Bernd R.]

I have a pretty simple application. A photoelectric sensor detects an object and triggers the image acquisition. The image of this object is then processed (a few morphological functions and particle analysis) and results are displayed in a table before a new image is acquired. The application also includes indicators for high/low limit, statistical calculations and a report generation. 7 to 10 particles per second are analyzed. Being still in the design phase, I use LabVIEW 7 Express. Do you think the LabVIEW Real-Time Module is necessary for my application?

Thank you very much for your help.
Bernd

[JaredA]

Hey Bernd,
It sounds like LabVIEW 7 should be more than sufficient for your application. What particular about your application where you thinking might require real-time?

[Brian_Beal]

I'm not very familiar with RT, but whether or not you can do this depends on several factors: The size of the image you are processing, the ability of your image acquisition hardware to get the images quickly, the speed of your computer, and what else the computer may be trying to do at the same time.

Are you trying to analyze 7-10 particles/sec in the same image, or 7-10 images with particles?

[Bernd R.]

I try to analyze 7-10 images/sec during acquisition. It works with LabVIEW 7, but I'm wondering how reliable it is.

[unclebump]

You can do this with multiple while loops running in parallel. Acquire the picture data in one loop and put it into a queue. Then use another loop to analyze the picture data when something is in the queue. When the queue is empty, this second loop will do nothing.