Nathan,
What kind of camera bus are you using; USB, FireWire or GigE? Are you able to acquire images with your camera in Measurement & Automation Explorer (MAX)? Here is a link to a community example that Grabs and Saves to AVI using IMAQdx. If the camera has digital i/o lines to accept the TTL signal pulse you can run the example I've linked to and configure it for a triggered acquisition in MAX. The camera's user manual should specify which pins are trigger lines or whether a specific i/o cable are terminal block is necessary. If the camera supports triggered acquisition you can go into MAX select the camera under Devices and Interfaces the select it's Camera Attributes Tab. There should be an attibute called "trigger mode" and its default setting is off so you would need to turn it on. If there are multiple trigger lines, you would need to specify the "trigger source" under its allotted attribute. Some cameras can only trigger the start of an acquisition while others can also trigger each frame acquisition. You can specify whichever you'd like under the "Trigger Selector" attribute.
Once the camera is configured to trigger I would have it perform its image acqusiition in it's own loop as in the example I linked then have the DAQmx tasks perform the data acquisition in a separate loop. Then all you would need to do is synchronize your data acquisition to a single pulse generation task and wire the pulse output to your trigger line. If you wish to control the acquisition of each frame you would need to generate a pulse train to the desired frequency for you application, however you would need to be cautious of the cameras limitations on how many frames per second it can acquire at.
Regards,
Isaac S.
Applications Engineer
National Instruments
