Fresco Logic USB3 Adapter

[sevincom]

Hi,

I'm trying to use Basler acA4600 color camera with Fresco Logic FL1009 USB3 adapter, but I can not use it. I read from the manual that "this adapter needs external power supply " in order to use the camera. What does it mean? How can I apply extra power to this adapter?

[Leeroy_Jenkins]

Hi sevincom,

Do you have a link describing the adapter that you are using?

[sevincom]

Hi Robert,

Here is a link for that: http://www.novitec.co.kr/kor3/products/download.php?uid=1039&num=5

I have the one with -10 suffix, which has no socket for external power on it. Attached the image of this adapter.

[BruceAmmons]

In the document you linked, it says the board gets power from the 12V PCIe connection.  That implies it doesn't need any additional power.

Does the camera power up when you plug it in?

Bruce

[sevincom]

Yes it powers up but I'm getting timeout error. In the test results of Basler, they mentioned power problems with this adapter.

http://www.baslerweb.com/media/documents/USB3.0_Host_Controllers_Max_Bandwidth_rev8.pdf on p.7

[BruceAmmons]

I think the card is working fine.  According to the Basler document, the camera wouldn't even be recognized without external power.  It sounds like they used the other version of the Fresco card that requires external power.

The Basler document does mention that the block size must be set less than 1 MiB.  I would try a smaller block size and work my way up.

I would probably try the camera with a different board or on a different computer to see if that is the issue.  You could also try the Basler software and see if it works.

Bruce

[BlueCheese]

The Fresco drivers (on Win7 and below) have some known issues with a maximum amount of total buffer size queued to the hardware before they silently fail, causing similar timeouts to what you say you see. You could try reducing the image size to something really small and see if the problem goes away to prove this is the cause.

I think Point Grey and maybe NI has some white papers/KBs describing this issue and some possible resolutions (I can't pull up the links at the moment), but here some options:
-Try the registry tweak described in one of those KBs that changes the maximum buffer amount
-Switch to a different USB3 interface card without this issue. NI's interface cards are based on a Renesas chipset
-Use windows 8 or newer, which use a single standard driver from Microsoft rather than Fresco and does not have this problem

Eric

[sevincom]

Bruce, Eric thank you for your responses.

I found that Point Grey Knowledge Base article that you mentioned and reduced the image size to see if that is the problem and it was. Reducing the image size around 8 times solves the problem but unfortunately this camera is useless with that resolution.

So, the buffer tip seems to be the most suitable one for me but I could not find a parameter named BulkInRingBuffers under that registery. I create a new one with that name and it didn't work. Is there any chance that this parameter exists with a different name? My system is Windows XP.

[BlueCheese]

I've had success with that registry entry. Did you reboot afterwards? I haven't tried it with XP though, although I think it is the same driver there, so it should work the same.

My best suggestion would be to just get a non-Fresco-based USB3 card. The Renesas ones work very well.

[sevincom]

After testing the adapter with different computers and operating systems (XP, XP 64 bit, Win7), I could not get the camera work with this adapter on NI MAX. But on all of them, I also tested the camera with Pylon software and it works well even on a continuous shot. So, the problem seems not with the adapter but with National Instruments software.