Image acquisition with LabView or MAX

[Matt M]

  I have a Cohu 7825 Color CMOS camera, and I'm using a PCI-1428 acquisition board. I have installed the Measurement and Automation Explorer (MAX), and I have also downloaded a LabView example called "Continuous_acquire_and _snap." With both MAX and the LabView program, I can bring up the live video and snap pictures, but they are not in color. I'm not sure how to set it up to acquire color images. It also seems that while both programs "continuously" acquire in the sense that they have live video, but they don't seem to have an option for saving the pictures continuously.

  I am new to LabView, so any help that I could get on fixing the color problem and making this image acquisition easier would be very appreciated!

[Jack J.]

Hello Matt,

It seems like the camera file that comes with MAX is for Cohu 7800 and that camera file is configured for 8 bit acquisition. You will need a different camera file to work with the 7825. You can use the Camera File Generator to create a camera file for your camera. You will need to know the various attributes, commands and values that control the camera operations. They are typically explained in the manual.

To stream your images to disk, you can look at the "Grab and Save to AVI" example program.

Regards,

Jack J.

Product Support Engineer

[Matt M]

I edited the Cohu 7800 camera file to be a 24-bit color camera, like the 7825. I am getting a "color" image now, but it is basically a grey-scale picture with a bule tint. Any suggestions?

[VJoshi]

Are you still chasing this issue?

I was chasing the same issue, and got some tips on this camera which you can use and let me know if you are able to resolve it. There is no actual color processing done in these cameras there is a Bayer filter pattern on the sensor which identifies individual pixels as R B G. The video output of the camera is 8 bit monochrome digital signal. The capture card deciphers this color by treating the individual pixels as R B G pixel. Ni framegrabber require this color processing to be done by external function/processor. EPIX framegrabber PIXCL1 has Bayer pattern decoding capability built into the firmware. Camera file format identifies the camera as a color camera/Bayer pattern for processing in frame grabber. Check EPIX library to see how it is done, also see this link for the hue problem that you have- http://www.siliconimaging.com/RGB%20Bayer.htm