NI-1752 Smart Camera - Timeout without external trigger

[hsalem]

I'm working with an NI 1752 Smart Camera, which is triggered by an Ethernet/IP step. It's loaded with VBAI 2014 and so is my PC.

Whenever I upload (or reupload) VBAI 2014 to it, Image Acquisition works normally. But it seems like after stopping an inspection in Inspection Mode then changing back to Configuration Mode, Image Acquisition stops working and I get Timeout Error. The error messages states that the "camera didn't receive the trigger signal in the specified timeout period", which doesn't make sense because I'm not using the External Trigger functionality.

Rebooting the camera does nothing to fix this. Sometimes it starts working again (I wouldn't be paying attention to what I was doing to make that happen), then stops. I tried testing it with all Acquisition Modes (Wait for next image, immediate, buffer) but that makes no difference. The network path from my PC to the Camera has plenty of bandwidth and no latency problems. I set the camera to initialize all steps upon startup, no difference.

Has anyone else got this problem?

Thanks,

Hazim Salem

[Brad]

If you have MAX installed, it would be interesting to hear if you get similar timeout errors when trying to acquire from MAX (and VBAI is not using the camera). When it gets in the bad state and you reboot the camera, if you open a new inspection and drop the acquire step, does it still happen or it's only with the step you have configured? If you can attach your inspection (ideally a simplified one if possible), it would be helpful to post it so we can see if we can reproduce this behavior...I have not heard of this before.

Thanks,

Brad

[hsalem]

Hi Brad,

Thanks for your interest in this problem.

I indeed get the same timeout error trying to take images with NI MAX. It gives me error 0xBFFF8004. I found this error in solved forum post, but the solution in that post didn't fix it.

Also, starting out with an empty inspection and adding "Acquire Image" step doesn't work either.

So far, I've managed to get the camera capturing images immediate after reboot in Configuration Mode, and also in the first time I switch to Inspection Mode. Switching back to Configuration Mode (this would be the second time), the image acquisition starts timing out. Switching back to Inspection Mode doesn't fix it. Only way to fix it is to reboot the camera.

Here are some things about this smart camera that might have to do with this problem:

• The camera came preloaded with VBAI 2014. Running on that version, I've never experienced any problems whatsoever.
• We sent the camera to the customer to be installed on-site. The customer didn't have VBAI2014 (forgot to deliver it to them and they didn't ask), so I'm sure they installed VBAI 2013 on it.
• I noticed that re-installing software on the camera does not completely wipe it clean; I've re-installed VBAI 2014 on it 5 times yesterday, and the inspections I had on it are still there.
• Since that's the case, there could probably be some incompatible VBAI 2013 executables or settings that are affecting it.
• The actual problem of Camera timing out started when I configured the camera (in "Configure Target") to run my VBAI2014 inspection on-startup. Once that happened, even when I disabled that again, I started getting these timeout errors.

Thinking abot that, I'm sure that by resetting the camera to factory default will solve this issue. I'm just curious if there's something wrong I did, or if there's a bug somewhere with software installation.

[hsalem]

UPDATE:

So I went ahead and restored the camera to factory-default, by formatting it using NI MAX then installing VBAI 2014 from my PC.

The timeout issues disappeared for a while, then started again. But now I have a better idea of why they started: I started using "Ethernet/IP: Sends or receives unconnected Ethernet/IP messages" step.

Now even if I reboot the camera and open an inspection that doesn't contain any Ethernet/IP steps and switch from Inspection Mode to Configuration Mode, the camera times out.

I tried all different triggering image capture methods to no avail. I'm tempted to load VBAI 2014 SP1 on it to see if that fixes it, but the customer doesn't have that version and therefore cannot access the camera.

What am I doing wrong?