NI-IMAQ FOR IEEE 1394 Cameras random boot-time driver problem

[TommyBoy]

Its always on firewire port 1 and 3.

[Dan_Quinn]

TommyBoy,

The fact that this follows the ports makes me suspicious. Have you tried a different off-the-shelf firewire card?

Dan

[TommyBoy]

Hi,

I replaced the 4 port card with two Belkin 2-port cards.
Problem does not occur as much anymore, but is not gone.

Now I have seen that sometimes only 2 or 3 cameras are seen by MAX and in device manager.
Restarting solves the problem.

[JohannS]

This is a known issue with NI-IMAQ for IEEE 1394 Cameras 1.x running on Windows with 2 or more cameras attached. On rare occasions this happens with a single camera. The symptoms are multiple cameras attached to a system and not all recognized by the device manager. Usually one or two will show up in the device manager and MAX. The remaining camera will show up in device manager with a yellow exclamation icon.

The problem stems from the fact the NI-IMAQ for IEEE 1394 1.x reads all the configuration registers on the camera when the camera is first detected. All the video modes and all the features are queried. In normal use this happens when a camera is plugged or if a system reboots. When multiple cameras are detected, the queries for each camera happens in parallel. This is very stressful on the FireWire bus and some requests do not complete in a timely fashion. The driver fails to connect the camera and the error is displayed. This error can be simulated by plugging in a FireWire hub that has several cameras already attached and powered on.

This problem has been addressed with NI-IMAQ for IEEE 1394 Cameras 2.0. With the new driver, the configuration registers query has moved from device detection time to when the user calls initialize session. With this new paradigm the camera is much less likely to fail plugging. As a tradeoff the initialize step takes longer, but that functions should only be called during setup.

Hope this helps

JohannS

[TommyBoy]

hi Johann,

Finally finally... thanx !!!

Finally i have an explanation of what's happening.

I will communicate this with the guys from NI belgium, to sort this out...

Thanks again,
Thomas.

[comrade]

Sorry to bring this old thread up again.

I am experiencing the exact same problem with two AVT Pike F1600 cameras, each running on one of AVT's own PCIe FireWire host adapters. Usually the first camera showing up in MAX is not found after PC boot up in 1 out of 3 cases. This holds true for any attempts to initialize the camera via LabVIEW and also for MAX, where the camera is simply not showing up in those cases.

I haven't checked yet whether the camera is recognized by Windows' device manager but possibly marked with that usual yellow exclamation mark. I will do that as soon as I experience the stated case again.

The currrent workaround is to manually change the drivers to AVT's vendor driver (Intek IEEE1394 driver) and back to Microsoft driver again. Actually not much of a hassle, taking only 20 seconds or so to perform. However, as the machine using the cameras is supposed to start up and function automatically this somewhat compromises the intended behaviour.

Everything I found in the forums so far was written way back in history and ending with the explanation to install the latest NI-IMAQ IEEE1394 driver or that it was a documented issue which would be solved in the near future. Now this proposed future should have arrived as I take it.

Any suggestions for a remedy?