Point Grey Flea3 Camera is stuck at 50 fps by NI MAX and LabVIEW

[nclark]

Hi all,

I have a Point Grey Flea3 FL3-U3-13E4C camera that is connected to my PXIe-1065 chassis by the USB 3 port on the NI PXIe-8135 Embedded Controller. The camera's specifications pin the frame rate to 60 fps. However, upon use of the image acquisition in LabVIEW, I have discovered that the measurement resolution is 20 ms. In other words, the actual recorded frame rate is 50 fps. This is confirmed if I navigate to NI MAX and view the "Acquisition Frame Rate," the value of which is set to 50 fps and is unable to change. I'm using the camera to capture the time at which an indicator is displayed, so any help in making this acquisition a little more accurate is greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

-edit-

Windows 7 64bit

LabVIEW 2013 sp1 32bit

[nanocyte · Accepted solution]

Have you tried reducing your ROI? You might be at the max bandwidth. Check out page 58

[nclark]

Oh wow. I can't tell you how often I looked through that data sheet yesterday, and I still managed to miss that. Thank you so much for your help. I'll try this the second that I can and see if it solves the problem.

[nclark]

Ok. I've got the camera going at ~419fps. I did have to change the ROI, but that proved more difficult than just toggling a few settings in NI MAX, so I'll post the how to here.

First off, I had to download the latest version Point Grey FlyCap2 that was compatible with my camera. Do NOT get the standard viewer edition. Get the SDK. I also downloaded the newest firmware update for the camera. I got both from this page: https://www.ptgrey.com/downloads.

After installing FlyCap2 on my machine, I then was able to install the new firmware to my camera. Note: FlyCap2 must be able to find the camera. If it cannot, then the issues could be that the camera's drivers are set to NI IMAQ. To fix this, go to NI MAX and right click the camera in the device tree. Select drivers. Select the camera's driver; not the NI IMAQ driver.

Once the firmware is done installing, open the camera using FlyCap2. You may have to unplug and plug back in the camera to get it to find it. Open the camera settings and configure it as needed.

After the camera is configured, exit FlyCap2 and open NI MAX. Right click the camera in the device tree and choose the NI IMAQ driver. Open the camera in NI MAX and ensure that the camera is operating as expected. You may now close NI MAX and use the camera in LabVIEW.