Using labview 8.5 to acquire sequence of high speed images

[placa]

I am trying to use Labview 8.5 with the latest version of Vision and Bitflow Labview vi's (sdk 5.0 drivers) to capture and save image sequence (video) at 200 fps. We are using a roadrunner r3, CL board with a Pulnix tm-6740cl camera (200fps full frame). The computer is a newer Dell Optiplex running Windows XP.

I can get the example vis from Bitflow to work but that only captures 1 image. I have tried to run a loop on the example vi like get frame and save each individual frame to an image, but the frame rate is too low.

It is not clear to me how to program a Labview vi to get 200 fps. I know that somehow the images need to be stored in a buffer on the system memory but I am not exactly sure how to do that and access them after the acquisition.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[Hummer1]

We are not trying to go as fast as you are, and have different hardware, but the concept may be the same.

In the Measurement Explorer set up for the camera, there is a portion of the process which asks whether you want to take one image, a sequence of images and process them as you go, (the option is a set of 4 or 5 radio buttons each describing a method for the operation of the driver, ) a sequence of images and process them later...or something like that.  We wound up setting up the camera driver to collect a fixed number of images.  We then wrote them to file as fast as we got them...

When the subvi for the camera imager "getter" came up in our vi, it had an input for the number of images to grab and an output for image and all images...we set the number of images to get to a specific number and when the vi ran, it grabbed that number of images at a pretty good clip...(the spec for the camera)...HOWEVER, when we set the number too high, we ran out of buffer space and couldn't write to disk as fast as the imager was taking images....

You might see if you get the same kind of options with your drivers.

Hope that helps.

The Hummer

[placa]

Thank you for the reply. I am wondering since it is a Bitflow board and not a NI board can it be set up in the Measurement Explorer? Can Max recognize it? If so could you give me a description of how to do this?

[Michelle_N]

Hummer, I am not sure what you are referring to - can you please post a screen shot.


placa,
Since this is a Bitflow board and their driver/API, have you tried posting to their discussion forums? contacting their support? To clarify, your frame grabber will NOT show up in Measurement and Automation Explorer. MAX strictly shows only National Instruments hardware and software products. For our frame grabbers to take one image we do a "Snap". This allocates one buffer each time a snap is configured. If you were to loop the snap function you would be creating a new buffer each time taking up unneeded processing. To take continuous video the we do a "Grab". This allocates a number of buffers. You need to find out how to do this in the Bitflow API.

[placa]

I posted this same topic on Bitflows forum and I just recieved a reply. The have updated their Labview driver vi's that support multiple buffer allocation that will hopefully help me out. Thank you for your reply.