two computers acquire image from same IEEE 1394 camera

[graduate student 44]

i'm grabing 30 frames/s from a IEEE 1394 Point Grey Flea camera. i need to do some image processing before compressing and saving the videos in avi. both tasks are very computationally intensive, so it is not surprising that they cannot be done on the same machine (i confirmed this using a high-end AMD dual-opteron machine). i wonder if there is a way so that i can set up the same camera to split its acquired images to two computers, i.e. for each grabbed frame, send 2 copies to two computers, one copy each? thanks!

[BruceAmmons]

I can't think of a way to do this. I would suggest approaching the problem from a different direction. Perhaps reduce the frame rate, or store the images uncompressed and post process them. The best approach really depends on your application details.

Bruce

[Scott_R]

Hello,

It is not currently possible to broadcast the images acquired to multiple PCs via firewire. That is a feature that is being examined as a possible addition to a future release of NI-IMAQ for IEEE 1394, but as of now there is no way to achieve this broadcast functionality.

The problem stems from the fact that our firewire drivers require that each connection be able to read and write data to the registers on the camera. Right now, there is no way to handle multiple PCs for a single camera.

Regards,
Scott R.
Applications Engineer
National Instruments

[graduate student 44]

I see. Thanks Bruce and Scott!