USB/DirectShow camera not showing in NI-MAX

[tstalcup]

I've got a Point Grey Chameleon CMLN-13S2M USB 2.0 camera and it is not showing up in NI-MAX.  

I'm well aware of the Directshow registration problems with the PGR cameras, and as far as I can tell the camera is properly registered.  It shows up with no problems in AMCAP, a simple Directshow viewer, and also in Skype.  

I just uninstalled the PGR drivers and spent a while going through the registry to delete all references I could to Point Grey and PGR.  I then reinstalled the 32 bit version of the latest drivers, v2.5 beta 2.  I also upgraded the camera firmware to the latest.

I'm running

Labview 2012 SP1 f2, 12.0.1

Vision development module 12.1.0

MAX 5.4.0f0

NI-IMAQ 4.7.2

NI-IMAQdx 4.1.0

Any ideas?  This is a side project and I've been working on it off and on now for more than a year and I've got to get this camera working.

[Simon-P]

Greetings;

Do you still see the camera after having gone through that reinstall within the other DirectShow viewer, or the viewer itself worked before the reinstall?

Did it ever show up in MAX with a cross under it, or it just has never appeared? I assume that in order to get it to work in the first place you had to go through a similar procedure to the one in the following article, correct?

http://www.ptgrey.com/support/kb/index.asp?a=4&q=310&ST=directshow

Or this one;

http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/allkb/7DF278AF77461951862579AD0063B9AD?OpenDocument

Cordially;

Simon P.

[tstalcup]

Yes, I still see the camera with other DirectShow viewers after the reinstall.  The latest Point Grey drivers give the option to register the directshow drivers during the installation.  I assumed that this worked since the camera shows up with the other DirectShow viewers, but I also manually registered the files according to the instructions in your links just in case.

I believe that a year or more ago ago when I was running an old version of LV (2009, I think) it did show up in MAX.  I had upgraded a few of the LV components piecemeal, but when my university upgraded to 2012 I decided to uninstall and reinstall with the latest versions of everything.  I have never seen it listed in MAX, red x or not, since I uninstalled the old version to upgrade.

I have used a camera from a different company and it worked fine.  

I found that the 32bit directshow cameras are listed in the registry at

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Wow6432Node\CLSID\{860BB310-5D01-11d0-BD3B-00A0C911CE86}\Instance

and I verified this by modifiying the "FriendlyName" registry key for the camera that does show up and observing that the name changes in MAX.  The point grey camera is listed here in the registry but does not show up in MAX.

[Simon-P]

Greetings;

Interesting, I did not know that the latest PointGrey drivers gave you that option themselves; that is quite good to know. And indeed, since they worked with other DirectShwo viewers it would indeed be a fair assumption that it was correctly linked, but I just wanted to make sure.

In what concerns the older version of LabVIEW, it is quite possible that the driver used to be the NI IMAQ For USB; it was a prototype driver that NI developed while the USB support was being added to IMAQdx. 

I do not know too much about the registry keys mentioned, so I cannot comment much on that at the moment, but I am quite puzzled. I will do a tad of research and inform you if I find any steps that we ought be taking.

Just to double check, is there any mention of an IMAQ For USB Driver in MAX or anywhere else?

Cordially;

Simon P.

[tstalcup]

I haven't seen mention of the IMAQ for USB driver in MAX, but that raises an interesting point I hadn't considered.  Perhaps the problem is not with the Point Grey drivers but instead an old NI driver that didn't get deleted when I re-installed?

The thing that I find frustrating is that a camera from a different manufacturer showed up in MAX just fine and I had zero problems with it.  I've also used Point Grey cameras on other computers with Labview with no problems.  

Thanks for your help so far!

[BlueCheese]

The DirectShow support in IMAQdx (and the old unsupported IMAQ for USB) is not actually a "driver" so to spreak and there is no association with the device or conflicts with other drivers to worry about. Both the old and new support use the same mechanism for detecting devices, and should show the same devices as what show up in other software such as AMCap.

One item to doublecheck is the bitness of all the pieces you are using from Point Grey. If you are running on a 64-bit system you will need to check that Point Grey installs 32-bit usermode pieces as well (not just 64-bit) or else 32-bit applications (such as MAX) will not be able to see the camera. The other apps you may be using with success might be 64-bit.

Eric

[tstalcup]

I installed the Point Grey 32 bit drivers, so there shouldn't be 32/64 bit problems.  

AMCap and Skype are both 32 bit and the camera shows up with no problems in both of those programs.  

So what is the mechanism used to detect cameras?  Can I manually check that it is listed there?

[BlueCheese · Accepted solution]

Hi,

The way we enumerate cameras is pretty straightforward using the only API mechanism Miscrosoft has for it. One thing I did notice is that we require the "DevicePath" registry key to be populated (in addition to the "FriendlyName" key). Can you check and see if the Point Grey camera entry has that? If not, try adding a string with some text for it.

Eric

[tstalcup]

That did it!  I added the DevicePath value to 

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Wow6432Node\CLSID\{860BB310-5D01-11d0-BD3B-00A0C911CE86}\Instance\{6BC8245F-7967-4197-B3F3-5CD16BCA8FD2}

and it showed up immediately!

The odd thing is that another camera (that I installed about a year ago and haven't used since) also doesn't have the DevicePath value but it has always been listed in MAX.  Wierd.

I'll let Point Grey know that they should add this.

Thanks so much, this has been bothering me for a long time now!

[74219812243]

Hi everyone,

I have the same issue with point grey camera and NI-MAX, please help me to add the device path to registry as you mentioned in the solution.

Thank you in advance.