virtual comm port of PCIe-1427

[jl201011]

The vendor utility of the SBF-200 camera allows users to change the frame rate and exposure time using a specified com port. The PCIe-1427 uses a virtual com port through camera link, but does not reveal the number to WINDOWS or users. Does anyone know what it is?

[jl201011]

I found an alternative way to communicate with the camera using imaq serial write and read.

[jl201011 · Accepted solution]

Attached is a zipped camera file for running the Santa Barbara Focalplane camera (SBF-200), which has been tested using the NI PCIe-1427 frame grabber board and LabVIEW 8.2. Help from Santa Barbara Focalplane and support from Spectral Sciences, Inc. are gratefully acknowledged.

[dorkxer]

I agree that you can use the serial write and serial read commands, but I would still like to know if it is possible to map the virtual comm ports of the 1427 to a comm port that is visible to WINDOWS. I need to run a command that will dumb all the status of the camera I am interfaced to and it will be easier to capture this with Hyperterminal than to write a program to do this.

So, is it possible to map the 1427 comm port to a comm port that WINDOWS can see and use?

[dknelson]

I also need to access the virtual comm of the 1427 to view Dalsa Linescan camera parameters, some of which are not available through IMAQ settings.  Frustratingly, but not suprising, NI would be so selfish as to not allow windows to access this port.

Please let me know if you find a way to access the port.

[JtotheB]

Unfortunately, it is not possible to map the virtual port in a way that Windows can interact with it. The only options are the IMAQ Serial Read/Write tools, or to use the test panel in Camera File Generator.

[jl201011]

If IMAQ is the only solution, NI should clearly say in its product page that PCIe-1427 is designed to be used with IMAQ. Furthermore, It will be advantageous to NI, if NI can package IMAQ read/write in a user callable library and share it with users.

[JtotheB]

You can use our text based libraries to interface with the serial port in C, or any of the .NET languages if that is what you want. The NI-IMAQ driver allows you to access a connected camera via the camera's serial lines using the imgSessionSerialWrite and imgSessionSerialRead commands. Please reference the "NI-IMAQ Function Reference Help" installed with NI-IMAQ for coding details. ( NI-IMAQ Functions » Acquisition Functions » Serial Communications Functions )

If programming in C++ you can find the header file for the NI-IMAQ driver can be found here:
C:\Program Files\National Instruments\NI-IMAQ\Include

Though you can send and receive serial commands using the NI-IMAQ driver, you will still need a working camera file for the camera you are using. Serial communication parameters, such as baud rate, are set in the camera file associated with a given NI-IMAQ session. You can adjust these communication parameters directly in the camera file. The MSVC sample programs included with NI-IMAQ should serve as a good starting-point to implement serial control with your camera.

[BlueCheese]

The CameraLink specification was defined to have a mechanism to access the serial port in a non-vendor specific fashion. This mechanism is via the "clallserial" component (see http://sourceforge.net/projects/clallserial/). This component is installed with IMAQ. As far as I am aware, all CameraLink framegrabbers from all the vendors I know of support this mechanism. This is better than simply mapping it to a serial port as it enables much more advanced use cases (for instance, it allows you to connect to a serial port on a real-time Embedded Vision System over the network from your Windows system). Generally if you look at camera vendor software to interact with their cameras via 3rd-party frame grabbers you will find that they use this generic clallserial mechanism to do so.

If you want to develop an application to communicate via serial via a CameraLink framegrabber you don't need to use the IMAQ API, you can use clallserial and it will work with any vendor's framegrabber without modifying your code.

Eric

[dorkxer]

Eric,

Thank you for sharing this information. My main goal was to find and easy way to query the current values of all the parameters of a camera I have. This is done by sending the camera a simple "gcp" command serially. However, I did not want to spend the time creating an IMAQ applicaiton for this purpose. I have quickly looked at "clallserial" and there does not seem to be supporting documentation. Does any exist? Thanks.