Basler camera slow to open session

[Richard2950]

I have 5 Basler scA1390-17gm cameras that were purchased at the same time. Four of them behave nicely, but one is very slow to establish a session. I have checked the IP configuration and that all seems fine. MAC finds the camera and puts it on the listm but every time it is selected in MAX or every time a vi opens a session to it, the delay is about 20-30 seconds. All of the other cameras open sessions within a second. Once the session is opened the camera can be triggered and read just fine. Is there some configuration problem that could cause this delay?

LabVIEW 2009

MAX 4.7.1f8

IMAQdx 3.4

Richard

[BlueCheese]

Hi Richard,

One possibility is that the cameras have different firmware versions with different GenICam XML files. It is a known issue that the Basler XML files have grown considerably in size/complexity with each firmware release as they add new functionality. The GenApi component that parses these XML files had some scaling issues that meant it got considerably slower as these files became more complex.

You could confirm if this is the case by looking at the Camea Attributes tab in MAX and finding the "Primary URL String" feature under the Camera Information section (you need to select All Attributes from the filtering). Look at the URL strings between the fast and slow cameras and see if they point to the same file name.

Assuming this is the issue, the best solution would be to consider updating IMAQdx to the latest version just released. This version uses an updated GenApi component that has had considerable speed increases implemented in XML loading. Even on the larger XML files it is quite fast. You can grab this as part of Vision Acquisition 2012 here: http://joule.ni.com/nidu/cds/view/p/id/2975/lang/en

Eric

[Richard2950 · Accepted solution]

I think you might be right about this. I did notice a firmware version difference in one of the cameras, but I am not absolutely certain which one. I am away from them until next week, but I will download the update and try it out when I can.

[Richard2950]

The update did the trick. The camera with the newer firmware version is still a bit slower to connect than the others, but the time is now 1-2 seconds instead of 45 seconds or so.

Thanks,

Richard