Cameralink Serial Port Enumeration

[csk]

How do I configure serial port enumeration for NI Cameralink
Frame grabber boards? (ie assign a Windows OS com port to
the cameralink serial I/O).

I want to use Windows terminal program to communicate
to the camera.

The Cameralink spec v1.1 says its a feature but I don't know
if its a requirement.

[Allison_S]

csk,

    This document describes enumeration/naming of NI-Serial ports.  Let me know if you have more questions.

http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/websearch/6511208D0D82A8C586256D18005F1545?OpenDocument

-Allison S,

Applications Engineering

[csk]

Some clarification is in order.

I am not using NI-Serial cards.

I am using IMAQ Cameralink Frame Grabber boards (PCI-1426 and PCIe-1430).

The Cameralink I/O bus contains two asynchronous data paths, one for image data
and the other for serial communication equivalent to RS-232. The 'COM' port is used
to change camera parameters such as Integration Time, Gain, bit depth, etc.

The 'COM' port is not a COM port as recognized by WIN32 OS. You can't use the
TERMINAL application to communicate with the camera. There are several IMAQ library
calls which can enable one to code an interface like the TERMINAL application though.

I am inquiring about a method (if it exists) to enumerate (create a pseudo COM port)
that the OS will recognize like a physical COM port. Something like a USB COM port
adapter in order to use (OFF-THE-SHELF) terminal applications to communicate
with our prototype linescan camera.

The Cameralink 'RS-232' and data paths come across one cable, not two....

TIA

[Allison_S]

csk,

    I apologize for the miscommunication -- I believe I read your post too quickly.  If you were using your own framegrabber you may have been able to create your own COM port, but with our framegrabber you have to go through our card and our DLL and only the commands in our DLL are available.
    As you suspected I believe that it is not possible to create a pseudo COM port for terminal communication with your camera.  I'll look into it some more, but I don't believe I'll have much luck.  Let me know if you have any questions on our side of it.  Thank you.
    Here's a forum that talks about the csernat commands, which are the commands to communicate with CameraLink.  It's the best way to get commands through to the camera.

http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=200&message.id=7960&requireLogin=False 

-Allison S.

Applications Engineering

[csk]

Thankyou.

A request for the next build of IMAQ, maybe...

[polarfox]

This post attracts my attention when I am trying to find out if I can use off-the-shelf Terminal program to do Serial communication with PCIe-1430 frame grabber. I wonder if there some suggestions how to run serial commands with 1430 card, I am new to any NI product including Labview. Thanks!

[OliviaC]

Hi polarfox,

Which terminal program exactly are you thinking of? And which commands were you thinking of sending?

You might want to consider using the IMAQ Serial  Read.vi and IMAQ Serial Write.vi in the NI-IMAQ »Camera Control palette to communicate with the framegrabber.

[csk]

He is refering to the Windows Terminal Application.

... the one you use for dialup using a modem.

With other vendor cameralink framegrabbers, there is a utility, a (TSR) that

sits down in the task bar, that redirects COM1-4 traffic to the serialcom.dll.

I don't know which DLL their talking to... the common or vendor specific DLL

but it works great.

That way, you don't have to write anything to interface with the

serial port of the camera.

Run the TSR, choose the COM port, then run Windows Terminal

to talk to the cameralink camera's serial port.

I have three 'other' cameralink boards and they all do it the same

way with a TSR except National Instruments. 

-CSK

:mansurprised: 

Message Edited by csk on 05-04-2009 10:54 AM

Message Edited by csk on 05-04-2009 10:56 AM

[polarfox]

Allison,

csk is right, I was refering to a freeware terminal program called Terminal like Hyper Terminal on Windows. It works well on one frame Grabber here but not the NI card.

Since new to Labview(learning now), I am trying to include my terminal commands into icd file for now, it works for most of camera serial commands, but I am having trouble on some serial commands with return strings, e.g, the command to recall camera configs, which returns in multiple-line strings. Do you know if there is a NI document explains how to code icd file? 

Thanks,

Yuping 

[csk]

Good luck finding info on the ICD format.

NI has an ICD editor here, do a search on it.

One thing that you will find out soon is

the ICD overrides whatever you camera's defaults

may be if you have the enable serial commands

in the ICD turned on.

I use an ICD with only the necessary stuff

(frame dimension, trigger I/O port, timeout)

and use a custom serial program I developed

using the NI serial DLL functions.

For some reason, NI chose not to include this

feature so someone would either have it in their

ICD file or use their DLL calls.

Go figure.

:mansad:

CSK