Camera has been removed 0xBFF6900C

[somebody]

Could someone please help me with the following error message: Camera has been removed 0xBFF6900C. I have not removed the camera and it seems like an intermittent error, because the next second it is back again, in the list. I have turned off Bill Gates' firewall completely, and I get the same error with another camera (same kind: Prosilica GE 680).

[BlueCheese]

Hi,

What version of IMAQdx are you using? Can you upgrade to the latest available? There were some older versions of IMAQdx that had potential performance issues of removing a camera when an automatic discovery packet was lost, especially if you had large numbers of network interfaces in your system. You may have small amounts of packet loss that could trigger that problem.

Also, it potentially could be a problem with the camera itself if it actually does in fact drop off the network when subjected to lots of resend requests (which may happen if your local system gets congested momentarily.

If you could give some specifics of your setup (network interface used, network topology, camera settings, etc) that would help give me some idea of potential things to look at. If you cannot upgrade the version of IMAQdx, please let me know and I can suggest some parameters to change that could eliminate the issue I mentioned above.

-Eric

[somebody]

Hi Eric,

Thank you for responding!

I'm using IMAQdx 3.0.0 and I don't have any later versions. When I'm using to snap-function in Measurement & Automation it sometimes works, but the grap-function almost never works. I'll also use LabView, when I get this to work.

The camera has an exposure time of 2000, FrameRate approx. 143 and StreamBytesPerSec 48640845. It is directly connected to my PC (Windows XP) via Ethernet cable (Jumbo packages highest value). Do you have any suggestions of what to do? I'm out of ideas...

//somebody

[BlueCheese]

Hi somebody,

At the very least you can upgrade to IMAQdx 3.0.1 (part of Vision Acquisition 8.2.2). This will work with your same license as 3.0.0.

Can you tell me what type of network card you are using? If it is built-in to your motherboard can you go to device manager and tell me what type it is?

I'm suspecting that the camera is getting programmed to send its data at the absolute highest rate and when it does your network interface is dropping some packets. On IMAQdx 3.0.0 we did not support changing this rate. In 3.0.1 we have a (hidden) attribute called "MaximumBandwidthAvailable" that you can set to between 0.0 and 1000 that will throttle the camera's peak data rate. If you go to your camera's ICD file ("C:\Program FIles\National Instruments\NI-IMAQdx\Data" on that version) you can add a line like:

MaximumBandwidthAvailable = "400.0"

If you save that file then MAX should use those settings (be careful because hitting the Save button will re-write the file and remove that entry). Under LabVIEW you can use property nodes to set this attribute programmatically.

Other options include putting in a PCI-express Intel Pro/1000 card to eliminate any bandwidth issues on your PC. Also, if you upgrade to the latest 3.1.2 version of IMAQdx we expose those bandwidth options fully right in MAX.

Hope this helps,

Eric

[somebody]

Hi again!

The network card is Marvell Yukon 88E8055 PCI-E Gigabit Etheret Controller.

I've upgraded to IMAQdx 3.0.1, but I don't know what value of MaximumBandwidthAvailable I should write in the camera's Data file. You say a value between 0.0 and 1000, but what should be appropriate and what does that mean?

I can now get the camera to work at  very slow FrameRate (=15 frames/Sec), so it seems to be something about packets... However, I must get it too work faster.

//somebody

[BlueCheese]

Hi somebody,

Ugh.. the Marvell device is (to put it politely) not very suitable for GigE Vision. We've used them here and have encountered nothing but problems. I'd highly, highly suggest putting in an Intel Pro/1000-based device. You'll have a far better experience...

With that said, you can probably still get it to work with the MaximumBandwidthAvailable attribute. This specifies in Mbit/sec the rate we want the camera to send data. There is a distinction between this and the StreamBytesPerSec feature that the Prosilica camera reports (which should be roughly equal to what you get if you multiply your frame rate times the bytes per raw image frame). The distinction is that one is the peak/instantaneous bandwidth and the other is the average. Normally you'd want the peak to be the full 1000Mbit so you minimize the latency between when the image is acquired to when it is available. However, you can reduce the peak down to the computed average without having to reduce your framerate. What I would suggest is using the value of StreamBytesPerSec, multiplying by 8 (bits per byte), dividing by 1000000 (bits per Mbit) and using that as your MaximumBandwidthAvailable. For the value you gave this would come out to roughly 389. I'd round that off to 400 just to ensure the camera acquisition doesn't get throttled.

Also remember you need IMAQdx 3.0.1 to use this attribute, so download that update if you haven't already.

-Eric

[somebody]

I have upgraded to IMAQdx 3.0.1 and added the attribute MaximumBandwidthAvailable to the file and... it seems to work!!

Thank you for your help!

//somebody

[ajp000]

Hello,

I'm having the same problem, with the camera randomly dropping after a few seconds to a few minutes of use.  An error message says "the camera has been removed," though it reappears in the menu almost immediately.  The camera was working fine until about a week ago, and I haven't made any system changes that I can think of.

I'm using an AVT Prosilica GX and IMAQdx version 4.3.5.  I believe my network adaptor is Intel 82566DM-2 Gigabit.  I tried adding the line that was recommended (MaximumBandwidthAvailable = "400.0") into the .icd file, with no luck.  The software has been updated a number of times since the original post though.  Is there an alternate solution now?  Any advice?

Thanks very much,

A

[paubine]

I also have this problem using a IC 3173 controller.

It's a problem here.

Let me know if you find anything.

Patrick