I am using Labview 6.1 , IMAQ Vision and 1394 Driver ver 1.1 . I have a problem with the 1394 IMAQ Driver and would appreciate any insight. The problem is that the driver seems to be too conservative in it's resource allocation during initialization of multiple 1394 cameras and I need to acquire and process from between 10 and 12 cameras. I have installed up to 4 FireboardRed OHCI interface cards with VIA ( 8 DMA channels )chipset , in 1 PC. I can install my cameras under the manufacturers drivers and run their demo application which lets me start and acquire / display 10 cameras at once at 30 fps /mono. This tells me that that is possible and not a bandwidth limitation problem. When using the NI-IMAQ 1394 drivers ,the best I can get is
2-3 cameras @ 30fps or up to 7 @ 3.75 fps. The driver returns an error " not enough resources available for acquisition" or the like. I have tried many combinations of frame rates and video modes to bump up the performance , but I can't see why the driver will not allow more than 4 @30 fps to be initialized. This is killing me if I have to make use of other drivers and lose the funtionality of the NI 1394 Driver. I know that certain 1394 interface cards only have 4 DMA channels , but I am running cards with 8 Channels and even so , I can plug 1 camera per port , per card , for a total of 12 using the Fire-I Driver with the 4 channel cards. Help. Thanks.
