IMAQ or IMAQdx?

[Jeff21]

Hi,

I would like to know what's the fundamental difference between the IMAQ and IMAQdx?

thanks!

[BruceAmmons]

IMAQ is the drivers for the PCI board framegrabbers (1422, 1424, 1428, etc.)

IMAQdx is the drivers for firewire 1394 and ethernet cameras.

Bruce

[kc64]

Where does the Compact Vision System (cVS) fit in this lineup?  I would have thought IMAQdx but Vision Building is using some "legacy" IMAQ1394 drivers.  There should be a roadmap or expert system on NI's website to give direct application assistance to at least show what group of VIs belongs with what hardware.  Yes?

[BlueCheese]

Since the CVS has FireWire ports for connecting cameras, it does not use the IMAQ (framegrabber) driver. It would use IMAQdx for new development. The Legacy IMAQ1394 drivers were the predecessor to IMAQdx and only supported 1394 cameras while IMAQdx is designed to support 1394, GigE Vision, and future camera busses. New development should be done using IMAQdx to ensure your code can take advantage of new cameras and new capabilities in the driver. 

Now, if you are using Vision Builder for Automated Inspection to configure an inspection on your CVS, it does in fact still use the older IMAQ1394 driver still (for the CVS only) for historical and compatibilty reasons. Since the CVS does not support anything other than FireWire cameras and Vision Builder AI completely abstracts the user from the underlying driver API used, it should not matter which driver is being used.

Hope this helps,

Eric 

[wbadry]

Well said Bruce and Blue. We hope to see NI in the near future consider NI Firewire cards as "Inrterfaces" so that Jeff, I and others could have a unified framework to deal with it eaily as anticipated from NI Team.

[kc64]

Eric--

Thanks for the very helpful response.  I will develop with the IMAQdx library.

Thanks,

kc64