Trigger Nikon Coolpix S210

[GeofPrice]

Okay, I've got a "government" project (for home) that I think I should be able to do in LabView. I have a simple Nikon Coolpix S210 camera. I want to snap pictures - that is to toggle the camera's own "take picture" button" every 10 seconds or so using the USB port that the camera attaches to.

The camera came with NO software - so there is no camera API or anything, but when I attach it via USB to my PC, a camera icon appears in "My Computer", and when I open the camera from "My Computer", an explorer window with a number of options appear:

"get pictures from camera"

"Take a new picture"

"Show camera properties"

"delete all pictures on camera"

When I click on "Take a new picture", a small window entitled "taking picture" opens with the message "the camera is processing your request", then the camera flashes and a picture is saved on the camera. I want to duplicate this process using LabView. Note that this is some kind of native Windows software (this particular computer is running XP) because all of this functionality appeared when I plugged the camera in - I didn't load any driver software. Clearly, Windows is sending some kind of toggle command through the USB port to the camera.

I am not interested in downloading the pictures or transferring any images from the camera to the PC. I want the pictures to remain locally on the camera. One of the problems I am running into is that when I search on the web for help on this question, I get inundated with video capturing solutions and the like, and I haven't been able to sort out the much simpler question of how to just ask the camera to take a picture.

Once I get a program that I can use to snap a picture, I can write the remainder of the LabView program to perform the appropriate timing I am interested in doing. Thanks for your help!

[newbie09]

Hi,

Is it possible to trigger the shutter using a fibre optic cable and an IR light source? there should be like a clear opical receiver on the front of the camera, that is operated using an IR source, that is how i am going to attempt to do it through a USB-6008 digital I/O!

[smercurio_fc]

On Windows you can use the Windows Image Acquisition library.

You could also try NI-IMAQ for USB Cameras, though you should be aware that I don't think this is officially supported by NI. 

[RTSLVU]

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GeofPrice wrote:

Okay, I've got a "government" project (for home)

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I don't have the answer, (but I believe smercurio_fc has pointed you in the right direction) I just have to comment on your usage of "government project". I haven't heard that one for ages.

Did you ever work for a government agency of some kind? When I was working for a school district that's was we called any personal project that we were working on in the district shop.

Also if Windows can do it nativly I would gather to think there would be some activeX or other "method" to achieve this from LabVIEW.

Message Edited by RTSLVU on 01-10-2010 04:29 PM

Message Edited by RTSLVU on 01-10-2010 04:30 PM

[GeofPrice]

No, I've never been in Federal government employment. I guess I learned the term "government project" from a guy who ran a University machine shop for many years, and he fought in Europe in WWII. As you may be able to guess, he got many "goverment projects".

[GeofPrice]

Okay, folks, thanks for the reply. I started looking into NI-IMAQ, and this is not feasible because it requires NI-Vision which costs several hundred $$$ which is not feasible for a project for home that is just for fun. Also, installing and using NI-Vision and NI-IMAQ hits somewhat on my note that I am having trouble sorting out a simple trigger to take a picture from the larger question of image and video acquisition. The NI solutions that have been suggested are solutions to far larger problems that I am interested in. Does anyone know better how to focus more on the question regarding sending a trigger command to a camera? Thanks!

[smercurio_fc]

In that case you will need to resort to using the Windows Image Acquisition library. There's an ActiveX interface for it, so you probably won't need to resort to calling the DLLs. The ActiveX interface is probably already installed on your computer, but the documentation may not be. You can get the full install from Microsoft via the link in this message.