Using frame grabber in Labview

[JohnAckerman]

I am considering purchasing a NI PCIe-8242 frame grabber to go along with my Basler ace acA1300-200uc camera. I can't find any documentation on how to actually use a frame grabber withing Labview, and I am very inexperienced with regards to using Labview. Does anyone have any advice or tips on how I can use the frame grabber?

For reference I need to start a video stream given a trigger from another Labview vi, and then take a few pictures and save them to a location on the computer within the first 30 seconds or so. I need to keep the video stream going until the end of the test. However I do not need to save any video - only the few pictures.

Thanks in advance!

[BruceAmmons]

There is no reason to buy a frame grabber for that camera, unless you don't have a USB 3 port on your computer.  It is a USB 3 camera and plugs straight in to your computer's USB 3 port.  You only need a framegrabber if you are using a camera that uses a non-native interface, such as camera link or firewire.

If you need precise triggering, you will need to connect a digital signal to the camera using a trigger cable.  If your triggering just needs to be within a fraction of a second, you can just start the acquisition in software when you get the trigger.

You can just run an acquire and display loop for the continuous video.  You will need to check the image index for the early images and copy the ones you need to a new image buffer, which can be saved or analyzed.

Bruce

[AmitShachaf]

Hi All,

I do recomend to you to buy the USB 3.0 card you selected from NI. Or the USB 3.0 card recomended by Basler.

It is a well known issue with USB 3.0 cameras that some of the computer USB 3.0 the chipset doesn't work well with fast camera. Then you start to get all kind of strange problems that look like software problems.+

Safer way is to get the board with a quolified USB 3.0 chipset.

We just run into this issue when we were testing similar USB 3.0 camera from Point Gray.

Amit

[JohnAckerman]

I aprecciate the input. I think I need the Vision Acquisition software in order to do what I want to. This software comes included with the frame grabber for around $200, but the software on its own costs around $400. Because of this I think it makes more sense to just get the frame grabber.

[BruceAmmons]

I haven't had any problems with built in USB 3 ports, but I have had experience with bad chipsets on other things.

You will also need the Vision Developments tools.  If you do a runtime license for that, it includes the Vision Acquisition license.

Bruce

[JohnAckerman]

Why would I need the Vision Development tools? I don't need to do any processing of the images I grab, I just need the images and a video stream.

[BruceAmmons]

Okay, you probably don't need Vision Development tools.  I think the tools you need are included in Vision Acquisition.

Bruce

[natasftw · Accepted solution]

Even if he did need the VDM, why would you recommend the runtime?  He couldn't actually use this.  It'd be wasted cash.  The only value to this is if you already have a built application using the VDM development software.  (which is more than the VAS alone which is more than the card he's looking at)

If you don't have VAS, definitely grab one of the cheap frame grabbers.  If you already have VAS, I'd skip the advice here to blindly purchase the card and test your USB3 ports before buying excess hardware.

As far as how you'd work with the frame grabber in LV?  Really, you won't.  You'll work with the camera you plug into it in LV.  You won't see the frame grabber mentioned anywhere.  In MAX, it'll be the camera.  In LV, you'll use the resource name from MAX.  The frame grabber is just going to be extra USB3 ports.