USB camera

[Ferry Toth]

Anybody tried to use an USB camera with LabVIEW?

Ferry

[Alberto]

Hi Ferry,
the answer is YES!
See here: http://www.mindofpete.org/labview_webcam.shtml

Alberto

[Joey Oravec]

"Ferry Toth" wrote in message
news:3e93d660$0$49104$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl...
> Anybody tried to use an USB camera with LabVIEW?

Yes I've tried a lot of different methods in the past few months:

- Video for windows kind of sucks. It's old, and doesn't reveal many
non-generic parameters of a device. Since I wanted higher-quality
still-picture imaging it was really pretty useless to me. Your mileage may
vary.

- Logitech provides an ActiveX based SDK for their cameras. This wouldn't
return images to a space in memory, but worked fine when capturing directly
to a file. I was using a cheap $40 camera, so the image quality itself
wasn't very good but it's one solution for non-still pictures. Lots of modes
are accessible through this SDK
but not through VFW as described on their
developer site.

- Canon provides a DLL based SDK for their cameras. This great great
fine-grained control, but requires a lot of work to develop a Labview
driver. They were also fairly rude providing very little service on the
phone, and were very, very slow (2-3 weeks) to deliver the SDK. Not a good
fit for labview, and downright un-friendly support.

- Olympus provides an ActiveX based SDK for their cameras. I would highly
recommend this as an all-around good still-picture solution. The cameras are
still priced as consumer equipment, the driver development time is shorter
since ActiveX is easier to work with than DLLs under labview, and the SDK
support person is very friendly.

-joey

[Irene He]

alberto wrote in message news:<5065000000050000001CE50000-1042324653000@exchange.ni.com>...
> Hi Ferry,
> the answer is YES!
> See here: http://www.mindofpete.org/labview_webcam.shtml
>
> Alberto

Or you can also check below link too if you want to have more control
of your USB camera like brightness, hue, saturation, frame rate...
http://www.geocities.com/irene_he/IVision.html

Irene

[sky]

Hi Joey,
Currently, i need to control the logitech quickcam using labview, any advice for me?
thankz

[mhaag]

Hello,

I wanted to update this post for those users who may be looking for a solution on using USB cameras with LabVIEW or Vision Assistant. Recently NI-IMAQ for USB Cameras was released as an example program on National Instruments' Developer Exchange (see link below). NI-IMAQ for USB Cameras is a free software driver for acquiring images from any DirectShow imaging device into LabVIEW. These devices include USB cameras, webcams, microscopes, scanners, and many consumer-grade imaging products. With the driver, users can configure their device, and acquire images into LabVIEW.

NI-IMAQ for USB Cameras [download no longer available; link removed]

Note: While NI-IMAQ for USB Cameras comes with complete documentation, it is not supported by National Instruments' Applications Engineers. Any support questions should be directed to other users through the Discussion Forums.


Regards,
Michael
Applications Engineer
National Instruments

[bimbim]

Hi,
I've read this topic and I think my question will find a solution...
In fact, I'm about to build a system that needs a video control, not from a camera but from a USB video external device(composite and sound in - USB out)to reduce the cost, so NI IMAQ for USB camera is the tool I will certainly use.
I've already used IMAQ for picture analysis with a PCI-1411 and I'd like to be able to drive the picture and video capture the same way even using an external standard (and cheap, around 50$) video USB device.
The questions are :
-Is NI IMAQ for USB cameras done to use basic IMAQ functions (snap,etc.) with any external video device?
-Which USB device should I use?
-Which ones have been already tested with NI IMAQ USB?
-Should I prefer Pinnacle, Creative, Intel...?
-Somebody has an experience to share on it?

Thank you in advance for your advices.
I'm looking forward to your answers.

Bim

[MarcoPolo5]

Bim -

The following KnowledgeBase has information about USB requirements for the USB IMAQ driver.

Basically, any DirectShow capable USB device will work. I have personally used a few Logitech and CreativeLab webcams and they work great.

Note: you must have IMAQ Vision 7.1 or later to use the USB IMAQ driver (see requirements for the USB driver)

Good luck with your project!

[bimbim]

Thank you!

[bimbim]

Hello,
I've searched for available USB video acquirement devices.
I've found the ones in the Word file attached.The two last ones may correspond to my needs but can anybody tell me if they are DirectShow compliant and usable with NI IMAQ for USB camera?

Thank you in advance.

Bim