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Is NI-IMAQ already a feature of LabVIEW, or do you have to pay extra for it?

We would like to add video & still shots to some of our programs, probably via CCTV or CCD cameras & NTSC signals.

I have found a few card manufacturers who provide LabVIEW drivers, but they all seem to require something called "NI-IMAQ". I have spent quite a while now searching & googling, but I can't figure out whether "NI-IMAQ" is already a part of LabVIEW, or whether it is an add-on that we will have to purchase from NI.

This was about all I could find in LabVIEW Help:

VI and Function Reference | NI Measurements VIs and Functions | Motion & Vision VIs and Functions

Motion & Vision VIs and Functions
Refer to the IMAQ Vision, NI-IMAQ, FlexMotion, and ValueMotion help files, which you can access from the Help menu, for more information about those VIs. If NI-IMAQ, FlexMotion, and ValueMotion are not installed, you cannot access their help files. Install these additional packages by selecting the Custom option during installation. You must purchase IMAQ Vision separately.

Use the IMAQ Vision VIs to analyze images using a variety of techniques, such as pattern matching, blob analysis, and gauging.

Use the NI-IMAQ VIs with National Instruments IMAQ devices to acquire and display images.

Use the FlexMotion VIs with FlexMotion controllers to deliver high-performance motion for servo and stepper applications.

Use the ValueMotion VIs with ValueMotion controllers to deliver general-purpose motion for stepper applications.


It sounds to me as though "NI-IMAQ" is already part of LabVIEW, but that maybe my development environment wasn't installed properly. [I didn't install it myself, and the master CD-ROM is off-site.]

Thanks!
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PS: I think that what we have is called the "Full" version of Labview 7.0: http://www.ni.com/labview/
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Hello,
NI-IMAQ is the driver software that allows you to configure the image acquisition boards. This is to configure National Instruments image acquisition boards. If you have third party image acquisition hardware then you would need their drivers and if those drivers provide dlls or controls to be used in LabVIEW then you will be able to configure your acquisition in labview.
Good luck with your application and have a great day!
Regards,
Koninika
Applications Engineer
National Instruments
http://www.ni.com/support
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NI-IMAQ is the driver software that allows you to configure the image acquisition boards. This is to configure National Instruments image acquisition boards. If you have third party image acquisition hardware then you would need their drivers and if those drivers provide dlls or controls to be used in LabVIEW then you will be able to configure your acquisition in labview.

I downloaded Pete Parente's "LabVIEW Webcam" software the other day, and, as far as I could tell, it looked like he would be producing his NTSC video feeds by essentially writing individual frames to some sort of "Picture" control about 30 times a second [I couldn't get his VIs to work, but I'm guessing that's how they're supposed to work].

So now I'm wondering whether LabVIEW provides some sort of a graphical control [or family of controls] that allows for "streaming" or "NTSC/PAL" video to be displayed in a LabVIEW window. If there is such a control [or family of controls], well, I just spent about a day Googling and searching LabVIEW help, and I couldn't find it [although, as I indicated above, my development environment might not have been installed properly on this machine].

And if it's not the case that LabVIEW provides such a control [or family of controls], then my next question would be: What do you need in order to write your own homemade controls for LabVIEW? I.e. who sells an Integrated Development Environment [IDE] for writing LabVIEW controls?
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