NI-IMAQ for USB and usb Cameras

[Vaibhav]

Hi Brad!

Sorry for the delayed reply.

I tried to run the exe given by you, on two different computers, and it gives the same errors. I am not sure now where is the problem. I am now doing the step by step debugging to see where can be the origin of the problem.

Meanwhile, would appreciate your comments. I am now running out of time to make this application and if I don't solve this problem, will have to go for buying another professional system.

The attached image shows the error I get.

Thanks.

[Brad]

My guess would be that you don't have the USB camera's driver installed. In addition to the IMAQ USB DLLs, you need to install the driver for the camera (provided with the camera). I think if you have a string indicator on your exe for the cameras that were enumerated by the IMAQ USB Enumerate.vi, you will see it's an empty array.

Hope this helps,

Brad

[Vaibhav]

Hi!

Yes, I think you are right. I have also been thinking on the same lines now, because the computer on which I was testing has not recognized this camera. But my confusion was because other computers with functioning cameras also show the same error. By the way, I can now run the client.exe without error on this computer, and it shows images captured by another source.exe on another computer.

anyways, I installed the LV and Vision RTEs on another computer where the camera is well installed, but on this computer an older version, LV 7.1 is already installed. Our 8.2x EXEs don't work there, so I installed lv82runtime and Vision820RTE on that and the Source exe runs well there.

Am now trying to run it on a completely clean computer with no Labview previously installed. Installed lv82runtime.msi and Vision821RTE.zip and registered the .dlls, and it doesn't show any error on the Source.exe but shows no image either.

Thanks!

[Brad]

Sounds like you're getting close. Make sure your Vision RTE is licensed. Have indicators on your front panel to show the flatten image string and eror outs from USB, DataSocket, and Vision functions to help isolate where it is failing.

Good luck,

Brad

[Vaibhav]

For testing purposes, I am asking the users to select "evaluation" while they install Vision RTE. Is this a probable reason for they don't see video images, while not getting errors either?

Isn't it possible to use the VisionRTE for evaluation period for 20-30 days?

Thanks!

[Brad]

The exe should work in evaluation mode for 30 days after the first use. When it stops working because the evaluation period is over, you would get an error out of the Vision functions.

Hope this helps,

Brad

[Vaibhav]

Hi Brad!

Thanks for the message. In these days, I did different type of testing. I tried to build installers and installed them on several "clean" computers and here are my conclusions so far:

1) The program had no errors, in them, and that the making of exe was also not an issue.

2) The steps to run an IMAQ application on another non-labview computer, are ok, provided that we install the Run-time engines manually and not through the installer.

3) I could also make the .dll registration automatically though selecting Register COM option while building the Installer.

4) The installer making process, however, misses out something evenif I have included "LabviewRuntime 8.2.1" and "Vision Runtime 8.2" in Additional Installers. This was evident from the fact that, even after including this Runtime engines in the installer, I couldn't run the client application (to view video captured by souce). It gave the error 74 about missing some function to unflatten from string (which is a function I used to compress my video data) and after Installing LabVIEW821RuntimeEngine.exe (89 MB) even after installing the application setup (where the installer includes those two RTEs), the client application run successfully. 

5) I could also run source application, and capture video, even with the evaluation copy, on the very machine which was giving error all these days. The problem was in the camera driver only.

6) The programs run even without any Reboots, but of course it is always a good practice to reboot.

It would be a "complete" solution, if I can figure out which components are missed out while I include "LabVIEW 8.2.1 RunTime Engine" in the installer, but are installed when I install the same engine manually.

Thanks a lot for the support!

[Vaibhav]

by the way, in the unzipped file of the labview821runtime engine, i could see the different products, but the same run time engine as 8.2. so it means only some products are not installed  and need to be selected manually. but then, I don't see any checkboxes for them in the "additional installers" of the create installer wizard.

[Adam_H]

Hi vaibhav,

I have been following the thread for a while now.  I am glad to hear that you have gotten things working.  The only thing that I can think of that would cause this is if there happens to be a problem with one of the RTE install files on the build computer.  So in other words when you include them either one or both of them are putting corrupt files into the installer.  This is the only thing I can think of that might cause this problem. 

[Vaibhav]

Hi Adam!

Nice to hear from you!

Infact, after doing the study of the knowledgebase and other pages, when I couldn't get my exe's working, I started to post in this forum. And from the conversation in this forum, I got many doubts cleared that I had about where I might be making a mistake. And as it turns out, the biggest problem was the missing camera driver. I was stubbornly using the old creative webcam (vf0010) even though I had brand new logitech (QuickCam Pro 9000) and Logitech QuickCam Express in other labs.

And yes, now have to find out which is that corrupt component which installs only with that manual pack. Right now started working with webservices once again, and also facing some webcamera problem on Linux (the same application has to be built in Linux also) and it seems that my Ubuntu 6.06 has a lot of difficulties with that. So upgrading to Ubuntu 8.04. And tomorrow, I plan to do some more experiments with building the installer (for eg by adding the RTEs in Source files).

Will update my results here for others.

Thanks!