NI Robotics with D-Link IP Camera for Tennis Ball Tracker

[Ihab]

Hello,

I am trying to apply the above mentioned example using D-Link IP Camera.

I contacted Axis supplier in my area he said it needs 4-8 weeks to be delivered.

My Summer Program ends 4th  July 2012.

Therefore I searched in my area and bought a D-Link IP Camera.

I need to know the difference

will it work?

how did you get power to your Axis M1011 IP camera while it is mounted on NI-Robotics KIT?

How can I access  the D-Link camera from the your VI "Tennis Ball"?

Many thanks in advance.

Your prompt reply will be very highly appreciated.

Ihab

[Ever_Song]

Hi Ihab,

First off, I think you may have posted in the wrong thread. Were you looking at another tread where someone is using an Axis M1011 IP camera with the NI Robotics Kit to track a tennis ball (I searched a bit but could not find a thread referencing this information)?

In general, if we can get the camera to work in Measurement and Automation Explorer (MAX), then we should be able to get it working with the VI. However, without having the code, I will be difficult to determine what changes will need to be made, but there should not be too many. To get it working in MAX, the camera will need to be compatible with our image acquisition drivers (either IMAQ or IMAQdx).

[CMal]

FYI, the example Ihab mentions can be found here: https://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Robotics-Documents/Following-a-Tennis-Ball-with-the-Starter-Kit-2-0...

Ihab,

I have not personally used a D-Link IP camera with LabVIEW, so I do not know if it will work with this example the same way as the Axis camera.  Officially, the IMAQdx driver only supports IP cameras from Axis and Basler, but that does not necessarily mean it won't work.  As Bill mentioned, you can see if the driver supports this camera in MAX by looking under "Devices and Interfaces >> NI-IMAQdx Devices".  If you have IMAQdx installed with the camera connected to the same subnet and the camera does not appear here in MAX, then it is not supprted.

If the camera is supported, you will need to make a small change to "Initialize Ball Tracking Refs.vi" in the example project.  Right now it looks for a camera with a VendorName of "Axis", so you would need to change that value.  To power the camera, you will need to create or buy a 12V to 5V DC converter (assuming the camera uses 5V).  This will probably require some soldering, unless you can find a converter that uses the same connector as the robot's 12V battery.  You will also need to power the wireless router from the same battery.  Many routers run on 12V.

If the camera is not supported in MAX, then you will probably not be able to use this example as it is currently written.  I do not know if any LabVIEW APIs exist for this camera, but you may be able to contact D-Link to find out of they have any LabVIEW drivers.

Chris M

[Ihab]

Hi Ever Song,

Many thanks for your reply.

I am trying to acces the Camera from MAX but it was not successful.

htpp:\//192.168.1.9/aview.htm 

D-Link has a software which need activex to be installed on the system in order to view the camera life Wireles.

They also have a Java option

Currently I ma using ActiveX option to see my IP Camera Life 

to see a snapshot from the camera I have to use the following link:

http://192.168.1.9/image/jpeg.cg

using the above link we mange to capture the image in MATLAB.

But at least we want now to make it with labview.

Do you any other ideas or suggestions?

Thanks

[Ihab]

Hi Ever Song,

Many thanks for your reply.

I am trying to acces the Camera from MAX but it was not successful.

htpp:\//192.168.1.9/aview.htm 

D-Link has a software which need activex to be installed on the system in order to view the camera life Wireles.

They also have a Java option

Currently I ma using ActiveX option to see my IP Camera Life 

to see a snapshot from the camera I have to use the following link:

http://192.168.1.9/image/jpeg.cg

using the above link we mange to capture the image in MATLAB.

But at least we want now to make it with labview.

Do you any other ideas or suggestions?

Thanks

[Ihab]

Dear Chris

Many thanks for your prompt reply.

I tried on the MAX, as follows

My system

Devices and Interfaces

Network Devices

Add Network Device

Find Network devices

Please correct me if I am wrong

I tried Remote system

Field Point

Entered  IP Address

but still not working

Ok 

is it possible to work with NI Smart Camera 1742?

We have this available for another project.

We can use if we amange to access it?

Is there any problem with Windows 7

Since we tried using NI Vision builder AI 3.6 and it did not work as well.

lease send me any comments regarding those types of Camera,

Many thanks in advance for your understanding and cooperation.

Ihab

[CMal]

Hi Ihab,

From what you describe, it sounds like the D-Link camera will not work with code running on the robot.  You mentioned that the camera requres ActiveX to be installed on the system, but in this case the system is a Real-Time operating system, and ActiveX is a Windows only technology.

I saw that you continued this discussion here.  I am not an expert with the NI Smart Camera, but if it only supports grayscale then you will not be able to use it to track objects by color.

Chris M

[Ever_Song]

Ihab,

Like Chris said, if the D-Link camera is supported (it may not be) then when you open up Measurement & Automation Explorer (MAX) and expand the Devices and Interfaces branch, you should see a NI-IMAQdx folder. It sounds like either the camera is not supported (since it does not show up with a NI-IMAQdx folder in MAX), or it could be that the IMAQdx drivers are not installed on the system. You can confirm this by in MAX going to Devices and Interfaces >> Software. If IMAQdx is installed, you should see it in the list under the NI-IMAQdx heading.

In regard to using the Smart Camera, it could be done but not without modifying the code a fair bit. You could move the tracking part of the application over to the Smart Camera and then transfer the “steering frame velocity” to the sbRIO.

Since it seems like time might be short, another option may be getting a DirectShow compliant camera that would work with the current example since the example polls the computer for all IMAQdx cameras on the system.

[Ihab]

Ever Song,

Thanks for your reply.

Now I can see the Camera in MAX under 'Remote System' .

I understand the color problem and Monochrome problem, therefore I mentioned in My previous post I will use yellow and blue balls. These balls could be tracked by monochrome camera as light gray (yellow) AND DARK GRAY (BLUE).

Now my problem is in the Color Tracking Example. I opened the Block Diagram, double clicked on the Vision Acquisition Icon (Express VI) I tried to connect to my smart camera. There is a problem of conflict between the two software on the Desktop, and on the Camera.

I went to Max again, formatted the Camera, transferred existing software On Desktop to Camera, Now both software (Desktop and Camera ) are same version. The program runs but it returns  can not find image and color plane?.

I need  help in the example now.

The IMAQdx appears in the list of software but does not have any thing under it, but the camera appears in the Remote system as I mentioned? Do you think that this might be part of the problem I facing in the Example?

The Reason I opened such discussion in the Vision part, because you mentioned that I posted on the wrong thread, since I am new to the forum, I did not what to do., and I need urgent reply before the program ends, I thought some other users might access the Vision section and do not look at the General version.

Many thanks in advance for your support and understanding.

Best Regards.

Ihab

[Ever_Song]

First off, I assume that we are now using the 1742 Smart Camera instead of the D-Link camera? The 1742 Smart Camera uses IMAQ drivers; not IMAQdx drivers that the example is built off of. This means that the IMAQdx VI’s would need to be replaced with the comparable IMAQ VI’s (similar to link one).

Additionally, the ball tracking VI in the example can be broken down into two components. The first being the vision acquisition and processing code; and the second being the robot control code. To get the example working with the Smart Camera we will have to break the example code into two VI’s.

The first one would run the vision acquisition and processing code and will be deployed to the Smart Camera and output the position data to the sbRIO (could use Shared Variables as shown in link two). We will then need a different VI that runs the robot control code on the sbRIO that will accept the position coordinates from the Smart Camera.

[1] https://forums.ni.com/t5/Archive-TKB/Smart-Camera-Snap-Using-LabVIEW/ta-p/3526816

[2] https://www.ni.com/en/support/documentation/supplemental/08/using-shared-variables-on-the-ni-smart-c...