IMAQ VISION toolkit without IMAQ hardware

[Brett Kornfeld]

I posted this earlier but accidentally sent it to the wrong forum. To those concerned I apologize for the double post.

I am processing images over a USB 2.0 port using third-party drivers and LabView Pro 6.1.

The IMAQ Vision literature I have read talks about many features I have been contemplating developing in LabView such as Zoom features, Region of Interest overlays, and, most importantly, screen display at + 60Hz.


However, I will not be using IMAQ hardware or drivers, and am having much trouble finding in the literature on how the IMAQ vision toolkit will help me if at all.


Will the IMAQ Vision toolkit work with a third-party driver, thereby greatly reducing my programming development time?


Are there an
y features that with my third-party hardware are only accessible with this Vision library and not through intense programming in LabView Pro 6.1 without this toolkit?


I would appreciate hearing from anyone with experience with these issues.


Thank you,
Brett Kornfeld

[Alberto]

Hi Brett,

the IMAQ Vision toolkit is a complete set of functions for image processing.
If you want to use it with third-party drivers you only need that the drivers return the image numeric data (pixmap), either as a flattened pixmap (1D array) or as a 2D array pixmap. I presume this could be achieved by a proper call to the driver's library, normally a Dll. You have to refer to its documentation.
Once you get the pixmap, you can easily convert it to an IMAQ image and use all the IMAQ functions.

If you are interested you can get a freeware library to deal with USB cam in LabVIEW here:
http://exchange.ni.com/servlet/ProcessRequest?RHIVEID=101&RNAME=ViewQuestion&HOID=5065000000080000004E510000&ECategory=LabVIEW.LabVIEW+General

I have tested it and it works!

Further, there is already embedded a function Webcam Flat to IMAQ.vi that converts a flattened pixmap to an IMAQ image.

Let me know if you need more informations.

Good luck,
Alberto