What does NI provide for custom camera file development?

[Brad]

We have recently released a new utility for creating camera files that doesn't require any knowledge about the camera file syntax. It is an interactive utility that allows you to adjust paramters while attempting to acquire so you can quickly see the results of your changes. The utility has pretty thorough documentation, so this will also help you use it if you have questions about it. One of the most powerful features is the ability to create attributes which allow you to put your camera in different modes with serial commands, and send control pulses to the camera for triggering purposes. The camera file makes it easy for users to accomplish this once these attributes are written in the camera file.


There w
ill be a more official web site for this utility soon that outlines the support expectation for this utility, but for now, it is just on the FTP site here:
ftp://ftp.ni.com/support/imaq/pc/ ni-imaq/cfgenerator/1.0/


The main caveat to be aware of is that National Instruments is not responsible for camera files you create with this utility and will not support the camera files created. If you have problems with the camera files and cannot get the acquisition to work correctly, you will need to use the existing channels of contacting NI's Application Engineers to request a camera file, and the request will be evaluated and if it's accepted it will be put in a queue for development.


You will need NI-IMAQ 3.0 to run the utility. I hope this information helps and please provide any feedback about the utility to our Application Engineers so we can continue to improve our camera file support.


NI-IMAQ 3.0 and this utility are included with the purchase of NI IMAQ hardware.



Thanks,
Brad Buchanan
National Instruments IMAQ Software"

[window warrior]

Hey Brad,

Would you happen to know how to decode the bayer pattern while acquiring live images in MAX? Would I need to change something in the camera file? LabView has a VI that allow me to decode the bayer pattern, but I won't be able to access the camera attributes in LabView. Thank you in advance.

[Brad]

Hello Window Warrior,

Using Bayer decoding in MAX is currently not supported. This new utility will not be able to do the bayer decoding either, but this is a good feature request for MAX and this utility.

What you can do is
1 - Go to Start>>Programs>>National Instruments>>Vision>>White Balancing Utility to perform a Grab while you do Bayer Decoding.
2 - If you need change camera attributes while acquiring, I would recommend writing LV code to do this. You do have access to camera attributes in LabVIEW using the IMAQ Set Camera Attribute.vi. See this KB more info on it:
http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/websearch/AF9983D6A809946786256D6C00682983?OpenDocument

Hope this helps,
Brad

[nimaq]

My Pc hung up when I clicked on above link to download this new utility for creating camera file. If I type "ftp ftp.ni.com" on the dos window then userID and password are required.

Please tell me how can I download this new utility ? Thanks.

[Steffen Hoog]

there is now limitation on server side (ftp://ftp.ni.com/support/imaq/pc/ni-imaq/cfgenerator/). In my opinion it is a windows setting of your PC or your administrator did it. Call your National Instruments Office. May be they can send you a CD with this 20MByte file.

[Ken Pietrzak]

I tried using this utility, but found it limited as to what I could do with it. We are using a 1428 camera link board and we want to generate an exposure pulse to be sent to the camera over control line 0. The pulse generation uses a 50 Mhz timebase by default. There is a limit of 16,700,000 counts (must be 24 bits) for the width of the pulse which corresponds to 33 ms. This is very limiting as we want to able to generate a pulse of 5 seconds or more. By digging through the NI-IMAQ function reference I discovered that there is also a 100 KHz timebase. But the camera file generation utility has no method for changing the timebase. How can I modify the camera file to use the 100 Khz timebase?

[rikriv]

I tried to intall this but I don't have NI-IMAQ 3.0, I only have the version that came with my board (2.2). Is it possible to obtain an NI-IMAQ upgrade so I can use this software?

[gregstoll]

rikriv -

The latest version of NI-IMAQ (3.0.1) is available for download.

Greg Stoll
IMAQ R & D
National Instruments

[skramanan]

We are developing a camera info file for a cameralink camera. The camera command format for sending 255 for gain value is like - 0x53 0C 00 FF 0D. And when we change the value of the gain, the FF should chage accordingly. How to set in Command? When I set as \x53\x0C\x00%d\x0D, the serial command it sends is 0x53 0C 00 32 35 35 0D. If I Chage %d to %x the value it sends is 0x53 0C 00 46 46 0D. Can any one tell me how I should chage that to get 0X53 0C 00 FF 0D?

[YR]

Hi...

Use my humble code...

int CVision::Hex2ToDec(char chH, char chL)
{
int iH = (chH >= '0' && chH <= '9') ? (chH - '0') : (chH - 'A' + 10);
int iL = (chL >= '0' && chL <= '9') ? (chL - '0') : (chL - 'A' + 10);
return ((iH << 4) + iL);
}

void CVision::DecToHex2(int dec, char* chH, char* chL)
{
int iH = (dec & 0x00F0) >> 4;
int iL = dec & 0x000F;

*chH = (iH > 10) ? (char)('A' + iH - 10) : (char)('0' + iH);
*chL = (iL > 10) ? (char)('A' + iL - 10) : (char)('0' + iL);
}