Control Camera Attibutes through serial port using VISA commands

[i.popa]

Hi there,

I'm using a Basler acA2000-340kc camera through an PCIe-1473R FPGA as frame grabber.

I would like to be able to configure the camera through the serial port just in LabView, not using a third-party as Pylon (which I can do now).

According to this forum post 

http://forums.ni.com/t5/Instrument-Control-GPIB-Serial/My-Basler-acA2040-180km-NIR-is-not-visible-in...

this is possible just taking the VI posted here

https://decibel.ni.com/content/docs/DOC-5049

and converting from IMAQ to VISA, as RIO frame grabbers cannot use IMAQ. I have been trying to do this by changing the IMAQ vi to their VISA equivalents, but I have no good results.

Does anyone know which are the steps to go from that piece of code to one that can be used to control the camera in my case?

Thanks a lot,

[Emily-C]

Hi i.popa,

Basler makes the Basler Binary Protocol Library for serial communication with their cameras. If you make sure you're running the serial server section of your FPGA code to keep the serial port open, you should be able to use calls from this library to communicate with your camera. We have a community example with more information on using the Call Library Function Node to call a DLL. This DLL will take care of all the processes needed to write from and read to the registry, so this implementation will probably be similar to the example program you listed above, using calls to this library instead of the IMAQ Serial functions.

Good luck with your application!

[i.popa]

Thanks for the information, that's very useful.

I've been including calls to read and write functions of the BBPL library, but I don't really know how to implement the controls I want to add. These functions allow just Buffer and Buffer size as inputs, so I don't know how to make it read the parameters I'm interested in.

Could you please give me more information about this point?

[Emily-C]

Hi i.popa,

Basler actually makes this library to work with their cameras, so if you have questions on specific functions and control it would be better to contact them directly. LabVIEW should just be making calls to this library.

Good luck with your application!

[i.popa]

Hi, 

thank you.

I have checked all the documents regarding the camera and the BBP library. I have also contacted Basler.

The problem is that I need to tell the library the register where I want to access (which tells the camera which setting I want to change). This argument does not appear in the function in LabView, but it does appear in the documentation. Thus, I have no possibility of accessing to a concrete setting.

Any clue on this point, or someone ha used this library before?

Thanks

[Emily-C]

Hi i.popa,

Could you please specify the name of the function you're not able to find through the DLL in LabVIEW? Was Basler able to verify that this function should be available from the DLL?

Thanks!

[i.popa]

Hi,

I'm using the function ReadRegister from the BBP library. I send you a picture of the piece of code. In the documentation it says it has the Address argument, but it doesn't.

In the code I send, I start with SerialInit, and pass the address from the register as an Input. It seems everything is being read correctly but there are no changes in the image, so I guess it is not accessing correctly.

Thank you

[Emily-C]

Hi,

If you post the actual VI I can take a look at how you have your Call Library Function Nodes configured, but it sounds like the issue relates to the DLL specifically. In that case, it would be best to contact Basler for more information on why the function doesn't match the documentation.

Thanks!