On Mac student ver, get DV video frame, output USB commands

[phillman5]

Sorry if this is the wrong place.  I did consider the machine vision and the instrument control forums, most of what I saw on these particular subjects were a couple years old, I am hoping the Mac support has changed. I am looking for an inexpensive way to get some measurements. Before obtaining the student version of LabView (Mac perferably) I want to see how 'easy' this is going to be, or if I should look at other solutions. I have some experience with LabView from the mid 90's, I think it was LabView 2. I figure this small project is a good way to get some LabView experience before we jump into a larger project and get some funding.

I have a small board that has a monochrome CCD chip on it with standard composite analog video out.  I also have a Sony analog video to  Firewire DV video converter.  Mac video applications pick this up just fine.  I want to grab  frames from this video stream.

I have a hand held motion controller that has USB input. The vendor supplies a VI with it.

I want to send step movements to the motion controller, then analyze the video frame repeatably. 

1) Is it possible to grab firewire DV video frames with LabView?  Does the student version come with appropiate VI drivers?  (What I saw in the Machine Vision forum was NI-IMAQ

2)  Would the VI from the motion controller vendor possibly work on OS-X, or are VIs either  Mac OS-X or  Windows?

I had some other USB questions but I found the tutorial on NI-VISA which I think answers those. 

[AdnanZ]

What is the protocol that you will be using to communicate with the motion controller? I am confused since you mentioned both USB and firewire. Post a link to the specifications of the controller if possible.

It might be possible to do whatever you are trying to do with USB but firewire won't work with NI-IMAQ on the Mac OS since NI doesn't support IMAQ on the Mac and Linux OS. If that's the case, then I would recommend using the Windows OS. I guess this should answer your second question as well; you will need to verify whether the drivers that are used are supported by the Mac OS.

[phillman5]

The motion controller is connected via USB, the camera via Firewire.

Could NI-VISA be used to also grab a frame from the DV video stream on firewire? 

The motion controller is model NSC200 from Newport

http://www.newport.com/store/product.aspx?id=403190&lang=1033

 I am traveling right now or I'd try to get more into, however I doubt there is much without downloading the manual. 

[BCho]

Hey phillman,

To do video capture with a firewire camera, you are going need the IMAQdx driver which is included in the NI Vision Acquisition Software. Unfortunately, as Adnan pointed out, this driver is unsupported on the Mac Operating system. In more bad news, the NI VISA driver is not really going to help you acquire frames from your firewire camera. As far as your motion controller vi's go, it would depend on the version that the vi's were written in. Contacting the motion controller vender would be your best bet in determining if there vi is compatible with the Mac OS X.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Let us know if this helps.

Ben

Applications Engineering

National Instruments