USB DRIVER FOR IMAQ

[Vision-USB]

 Hello,

 I have one CreativeLabs  Webcam Live !  The webcam driver is told to be

compatible with Microsoft DirectShow.  After starting the Vision Assistant,

the system display a message "incorrect settings for the camera". Does

anyone have a sugestion ?  The camera is working  normally with the

manufacturer software.

THX !

[Brooks W.]

Hi,
I am assuming that you have a USB webcam.  If so, you will not be able to use this with the Vision Assistant.  Here is a portion of the Vision Assistant help below.

You can acquire live images in Vision Assistant if you have one of the following device and driver software combinations:

• National Instruments IMAQ device and NI-IMAQ 3.0 or later
• IEEE 1394 industrial camera and NI-IMAQ for IEEE 1394 Cameras 1.5 or later

Do you have LabVIEW?  If so, then you can acquire images through most usb cameras.  You will need the USB camera VI's which you can download from:
http://venus.ni.com/stage/we/niepd_web_display.DISPLAY_EPD4?p_answer=&p_guid=ED6942DF78E34659E034080020E74861&p_node=DZ52490&p_rank=&p_source=Internal&p_submitted=N

Please note that while NI-IMAQ for USB Cameras comes with complete documentation, it is not supported by National Instruments Applications Engineers.

Best Regards,
Brooks W.
National Instruments

[Underflow]

External link

[Vision-USB]

Brooks,

 Thanks for your time on answering my question about USB camera.

  Your assumption is correct. I have a CreativeLabs Webcam Live!

   According to NI-IMAQ USB Driver Guide, this driver support Webcams,

the guide asks for launching Vision Assistant and select  Acquire Image

option. That is exactly when I got the message "The settings for this camera 

are not valid" message.

   Yes , I have  LABVIEW 7.1 (student version) installed on my PC.

   Last but not least, I am afraid I could not understand your statement that

I will not be able to use Vision Assistan , why not ? This Webcam according to

CreativeLabs does support  DirectShow and this is what NI asks to IMAQ USB

Driver works. If you could please make additional comments I will greatly appreciate

them.

Regards,

Guilherme 

[alipio]

Hi Guilherme

See this link:http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=200&message.id=7317&view=by_threading&page=1

There have been quite a lot of discussions about the subject.

 You can use most webcams under vision assistant and vision development, but there are some problem with languajes.

Hope it helps

Alipio

[Brooks W.]

Hi Guilherme,
Since you have the NI-IMAQ USB driver, and the camera supports Direct Show filters, then you should be able to use it with Vision Assistant.  Unfortunately, NI Application Engineers don't support the NI-IMAQ USB driver.  However, I will try to help you troubleshoot this problem.

Have you tried acquiring images through LabVIEW using the USB driver?  Does that work?

What OS are you using?

Best Regards,
Brooks W.
National Instruments

[Vision-USB]

Brooks,

Thanks for your pro-active attitude on helping me with my USB issues.

I believe that the underlying issue of my problem is to identify how to set-up my camera settings

(assuming that there is no language issues) once CREATIVELABS states that its WEBCAM Live !

supports Microsoft DirectShow Driver Capabilities.  I am not sure if I understood your suggestion

to use LABVIEW  for acquiring the images without the aid of Vision Assistant, what could be the

difference that could make one working and the other don't ?

 My OS is Windows XP with SP2  ( Portuguese Version ).

Thanks,

Guilherme

[alipio]

Hi
You can be quite positive the problem is a language dependency one.
As I know for other posts and for my home PC, IMAQ USB from NI does not work  in xp sp2 in spanish, german... etc. It works in english only. Fails are in vision asistant and plane vision.
Try xp sp2 englis or your native language in xp sp1.

Cheers
Alipio

[Vision-USB]

Alipio,

  Thank you for your inputs and informations.  I hope some fellow from NI (Brooks could be the one)

could do extra investigations, why  Windows XP  SP2 has languages issues with this NI USB driver

and with SP1 works fine, no matter language you are using ?

  Brooks is this a known issue for you ?

THX !

Guilherme

[Brooks W.]

Hi Guilherme,
The Direct Show driver for USB cameras returns language specific strings for certain functions.  There are some hard coded English strings used in the driver when looking for a "Capture" pin.  Apparently on non-English OS's, the driver returns the capture pin string in the OS language, so the english string isn't found.  I don't see how this would be any different for XP SP1.

Alipio,
Have you seen the USB driver work on XP SP1 with a non-english OS?

Best Regards,
Brooks W.
National Instruments