How do I capture an image of the network Camera ?

[John_vu]

I am a intermediate Labview programer. I have couple cameras that had a build-in web server ( Sony SNC-CS3N and Axis 2120) and I want to use labview to acquire and save the image from the camera. However, I had read few posted messages of how to use activeX to capture the image from the web page but I am not quite sure how to start. If anyone have a sample program or a document showing how to build a labview program, please share with me.

Thanks

[km76107]

I used a D-Link wireless camera with built in webserver.  Here is the code i used and it worked for me.

Hope this helps.

[blitzcraig]

What is the ActiveX object you have in that code, I can't get your code to work?  I too have a network camera with webserver, how do I access it in labview?

[km76107]

I am using Gif89a as the activex object.  the code works fine for me.  What camera do you have?  Is it wireless or wired (LAN)? You might want to check your IP configuration.

[blitzcraig]

It is an O'Rite Wireless IP Network Camera.  I can pull up the IP in IExplorer and see the image and control the camera.  I want to do the same in LabVIEW.  I do not have the ActiveX object Gif89a installed, what is this?  Where can I get it?

[km76107]

I think you'll need to look at the software CD that O'rite provides.  That's pretty much what i did for my application.  I installed the D-link software and played with the different activeX objects. I will try to look what's available for O'rite... by the way the O'rite website doesn't work...can you send me the link to the camera's website...

[blitzcraig]

There's no software that O'rite provided.  It's all on the webserver page.  It seems to me that when you go to the IP of the camera with IE, it asks you to install an ActiveX component then puts the live image in the IE window.  This camera is really cheap and I'm not surprised the O'rite website doesn't work. 

[km76107]

can you find out what that activex component is? maybe that's the one you'll need to call in your LV program... you'll need to put that activex component in your reg32 and call it from labview.

[blitzcraig]

Yeah, that might work.  I would like to stay away from using ActiveX components because eventually this VI will be remote and remote VIs can not display ActiveX running on the host computer in the webpage.  I wish there were some simple way of just grabbing the data stream over the ethernet port and parsing all the data myself.  Any ideas on this?

[km76107]

yea... .. you could continously write the image data (.bmp or .jpeg) into a file and the read the file in your labview and display in a picture ring.