CVS camera disconnects and causes reboot

[Hony2]

Hi Marty,

long, long time ago we used PC with firewire card, but not only for VBAI,but also for driving complete production line and also for acoustic test with one card from NI with 8 AMPs consumtion. We had very often frozen PC, HW problems and CVS was the solution. After replacement of firewire card and starting using the CVS i do not see problems like this. I do not know consumtion of CVS, but one industrial camera can have really around 5 Wats, I do not know how much during it's inicialization. I think, that when You buy one firewire hub to suply camera from hub and test it, it will not be worst then before and It is not so expensive. We use Belkin hub with 15 Wats power suply and we had 4 cameras on one hub with total consumption 14,5 Watt. It was running two Years w/o problems and now probably higher temperature, some amortisation of used components etc...I read that someone tried to change everything. Was there alsow powersuply for CVS changed? Cause when the conception in CVS is similar to PC there should be some wires nearly directly from PS to

firewire conector.

Jan

[MartyP]

I do not have a separate power supply for the camera. It is powered from the power supply in the CVS. This is the power supply that NI had changed previously. The 6 pin firewire connector supplies power to the camera. The IEEE 1394 bus power is 18 watts max. This should not be a problem with only camera connected. If I connect the camera directly to my pc with an external power supply for the camera and run the inspection on my computer, I don't have any problems.

MartyP

[Hony2]

We power CVS from external SIEMENS LOGO PS. Energy comming from FireWire connector depends on energy comming to CVS. If I do not have input to CVS strong enough to cover peaks of consumption of CVS and Camera, CVS has automatically priority 1 and rest of the world has temporary blackout. There can be lot of factors on the way. Temperature, connectors (resistance), age of equipment. Even it is not mechanically moving, each part has some lifetime and when it is older it has very probably higher consumption. When It is running 24 hours 251 working days in year with frequency 4 tests per minute I beleve, that something will be tired.

But for explanation, we made some improvement with more hubs, but on the base of theory of misscomunication. And it is working against my opinion that it will not work. Yesterday I was investigating, why my theory does not work fully, so I discovered pdf file with "specification" description of IMAQ and how does it works on the bus. And I discovered one important sentence:" If cameras are not detected by the host computer, it is an indication that there is not enough power provided to all of the cameras." and it is an explanation for my problem.

To tell the true I remember that we use hubs for one cameras at the begineing, but it was for PC card not for CVS.

Sometimes it is easier than it looks like, sometimes that way how to solve it, is to go from Your point of view on a blind way only to make You sure that it is really stupid. Motivation question: Are You really sure that it is not reason of Your problem? Did You ever tested that it really do not has an impact?

Nice day

Jan

[Hony2]

Hello MartyP, discussion is dead, do you have still this issue, or not? I had it again, so we will manage special PS for each camera. Beacause of inactivity on forum I think someone solved it or my proposal was correct.

Hony

[MartyP]

No we never resolved the problem, but we have learned some things. VBAI when running on a CVS doesn't use the IMAQdx driver, it isn't even an option. It uses the legacy driver. My cameras don't work well with the legacy driver. If you run an inspection on your CVS from the program configuration screen when connected to your desktop computer, the inspection isn't running on the CVS, it is running on your computer. We needed to add another camera to our inspection so we purchased two AVT Guppy cameras and set up a two camera inspection. It seems you need to set the Gamma to OFF so that you don't get a washed out first image when you start your inspection. This we learned from the engineer at AVT. I believe all of the problems with the original cameras are due to problems with the Legacy driver. There are still a lot of unanswered questions about the original cameras, but I'm reluctant to say the problem is with the cameras. They work well with their own software, and seem to work well as long as they aren't connected to a CVS.

[Hony2]

This is alsow my expirience, something is working in VisionBuilder Edit mode, but in case tha You switch only to CVS it is making troubles. Only some steps like OPC conection to change some variable in OPC server in PC of the line. My english is not so good so I must absorbe what You've wrote, but it is looking that You've make a big step, but I will be alsow carefull until You will be sure. Thanks for reply

[MartyP]

Your camera needs to be configured to use the Legacy driver. This can only be done if the camera is plugged directly into your computer. You can do this in the device manager or through MAX, but you won't be able to change it if the camera is plugged into the CVS. It would be nice if an NI engineer would write a Knowledge Base Article about this because there is a lot of confusion about which driver the CVS uses. All of the information I have read indicates the Legacy driver is no longer used, but this is not the case.

[mvonstein]

"VBAI when running on a CVS doesn't use the IMAQdx driver, it isn't even an option."

This is a good point, MartyP.  I would like to know from NI why you can use it in MAX when the cameras are hooked to the CVS, but not in VBAI?

Some of my cameras work much better with the IMAQdx drivers (judging from watching how they perform on IMAQdx in MAX versus on the Legacy driver in MAX).   Another odd thing, is when you watch it in MAX, it shows up on the monitor connected to the CVS unit.  Seems like it must be simply be a limitation inside the VBAI application?

Mike 

[MartyP]

We were told that the IMAQdx driver used too much resources, whatever that means. It is confusing if you have your camera configured for the IMAQdx driver because it will show up in max as an imaging device on your CVS. This doesn't mean that it will work properly. I think the cameras that I have would work fine if I were running an inspection out of my computer using the IMAQdx driver. The camera firmware was designed to work with the IMAQdx driver. The drivers obviously perform differently although I have no idea to what extent.

I don't think NI has this documented anywhere. There was even some confusion at NI as to which driver was actually used.

Marty

[mvonstein]

Personally, I think the whole interrelationship between MAX and VBAI is very confusing when it comes to setting up the CVS.  It seems like there is duplicated setup data and the functions are unclear. I've had situations, which I don't completely understand, where it seems that I've had to change settings in MAX to get things to work in VBAI.

In my opinion, it would be nice to leave MAX out altogether and put all the settings in one place inside VBAI.  If nothing else, then better documentation about how to setup the CVS would be helpful.  The whole process is extremely quirky and really turns off novice users around here on using the CVS.  I'm a technical person and the process to me seems just short of voodoo...

Thanks,
Mike