LabVIEW interface to Pelco s5320 Spectra HD

[muks]

Wait before you uninstall Vision (No harm but...) try installing a new direct show and see if it works

[SHowell73]

Isnt Direct Show part of Direct X? 

[MoviJOHN]

First things first.  Determine if the IP/Web Cam driver solution is working by trying to use it with something like Skype, Yahoo Messenger, or the TinyChat.com service.  If the camera video can be pulled into any of these, then there is no problem with DirectMedia.

[SHowell73]

I just tried it with Skype, it is not working. I get a "connecting to camera..." on a black screen, this never changes. The video input is set to MJPEG, I've also tried JPEG. 

The camera is set for 2 streams, the primary is H.264, the secondary to JPEG. The settings will not let me change the second to MJPEG. 

I tried changing the primary to MJPEG and still the same thing. I think it might be something with the camera, Pelco might have a proprietary format? 

I am going to give them a call and see what they can tell me. 

[muks]

Please let us know if you hear anything

[SHowell73]

I was unable to get the adapter to work, Pelco support was of no help whatsoever as this is a small project so they are not going to put time and resources into it.

I have downloaded the Pelco SDK, but I am unfamiliar with calling DLLs from LabVIEW, I have read several tutorials and it makes sense on how to do this, however, I am unsure on which dll's to call and use? 

When I point to the DLL in LabVIEW in the Call Library Function Node, most of the time, the drop down box for the functions is not active. 

Not sure what to do at this point. Never have been a text based programmer, I can understand what the code is doing when I review some of the example programs in the SDK, but I still do not understand which dll I need to use to pull video from this camera? 

[MoviJOHN]

I did a bit of research this weekend on this.  Mostly, I looked at smartphone apps that can view IP cams, so I could see the URL format.

For the pelco cameras like the Spectra HD, the url was simply http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:pppp

Can you list the url formats you have tried so far?  If the camera supports being viewed from a web browser, you should be able to link up to it from the IP-USB software.  If not, try another spftware.  It is possible that the one you picked is not that great.

[MoviJOHN]

Writing wrappers for DLLs in LabVIEW is kind of a crap shoot.  Auto Import of DLLs rarely works, so you have to code it all by hand.  A lot of function calls will require you to handle callbacks.  It's a headache if C++/C is not you primary language.

[SHowell73]

Thanks again for the info.

I am moving forward with the .NET SDK and have made some headway. The constructors are pretty intuitive and I have direct access to the objects and methods this way. 

Hopefully I will be able to test sometime later this week.