any recommendations for a frame grabber for Labview?

[Scot]

I need a framegrabber so I can incorporate the output of a B/W CCD camera with my Labview project. I currently use Labview 5.1 on Windows XP. I am guessing that I will need to learn how to use DLLs within Labview.

I have found a fairly inexpensive card from Sensoray, the model 611, that comes with a DLL, but would like to know if anyone has any experience with this card, or can offer a better suggestion. I would prefer to keep the cost below $200 if possible.

Thanks,
Scot

[dmp]

The ideal option for using your monochrome analog camera with LabVIEW is to use a National Instruments image acquisition card (frame grabber). Every image acquisition card requires a board-level driver to talk to the hardware. NI-IMAQ is the hardware driver that is used with all National Instruments frame grabbers. When NI-IMAQ is installed it also puts a set of LabVIEW VIs in the functions palette. These VIs do not themselves constitute a "driver", but rather are simply wrappers for function calls to the NI-IMAQ driver. Basically the work of calling DLLs within LabVIEW is done for you. There are also countless other benefits of using a National Instruments frame grabber and driver - such as a wealth of example programs, documentation, and technical support to name a few. The most cost effective frame grabber that National Instruments makes is the PCI-1407:NI PCI-1407: Single-Channel, Analog, Monochrome AcquisitionThe price is beyond your budget, but may be worth considering.

If you are not tied to that analog camera, another option would be to use a firewire camera with a firewire card and the NI-IMAQ for IEEE 1394 driver. See the following product page for more information:
NI-IMAQ for IEEE 1394: Driver Software for FireWire Cameras

NI-IMAQ is not designed to be used with other company's frame grabbers, but every frame grabber manufacturer has a driver designed for their own hardware. There are companies out there who have created their own LabVIEW VIs to make calls to their own hardware driver, with varying degrees of success. For example, at one point a company called Image Mill Technology offered LabVIEW VIs to access Matrox's framegrabber driver, called MIL-Lite.

I do not know if Sensoray has LabVIEW VIs for their driver, but you might ask. If not, you would need to make calls to their DLL from LabVIEW. Here is a document that may help get your started:
Developer Zone Tutorial: An Overview of Accessing DLLs or Shared Libraries from LabVIEW

I hope this helps! Good luck.

Best regards,
Dawna P.
Applications Engineer
National Instruments