Trouble with connecting Pleora iPORT CL-U3 to NI-MAX with IMAQdx drivers. Error 0xBFF6903E.

[MGould]

What was the work around?

[kensign]

@MGould:

This error is fairly generic, so the following workaround can only help in a situation where we have pinpointed the exact problem. If you don't have this exact device, the same error is most likely due to a different problem and this workaround will not be helpful and could worsen recovery from error. That being said, here are the details of how to workaround this particular issue with the Pleora iPORT CL-U3:

1) Make absolutely sure that the device is plugged in to external power. When I was trying to reproduce this issue I noticed that the device would show up in Device Manager without external power, but would not behave properly.

2) If the error is still occurring, try creating the following registry key (regedit.exe)***

• Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE->SYSTEM->CurrentControlSet->services->niimaqdxk->Parameters
• Add a new DWORD (32-bit) Value called U3V_DisableEndpointStall
• Modify the data to have a value of 1

3) Reboot

4) Try again in MAX

Updating that registry key eliminates some measures we take to ensure that the USB endpoints are all in a good state when starting and stopping acquisitions. You should not see any degradation in performance or image quality, but it could affect how the device recovers from error. For example, if an error occurs during an acquisition you may need to power cycle the camera instead of just restarting the acquisition or reopening the camera. Depending on what your application is doing, this resetting of the endpoints may never be strictly necessary. It just helps us guarantee that our software will perform well in the most abusive scenarios for a camera. My expectation is that the software/device would behave as expected without any issues. However, since we don't test devices under those settings and I don't know what your use-case is, I cannot be 100% certain. That outcome seems much preferred to the camera not working at all though, so hopefully this will allow you to use this device with IMAQdx. My contact at Pleora said that he has forwarded all of my debugging information to the developers in hopes that they can address this issue in their next firmware update. I will update this thread once I hear back from them that the issue has been resolved.

Thanks,

Katie

***DISCLAIMER: This step involves editing the registry. Inappropriate changes to the Windows Registry can disable the operating system or prevent it from functioning properly. To safeguard against such an accident, we recommend that you back up your existing registry by choosing Registry » Export Registry File... after launching the Registry Editor and before making any changes.  

[MGould]

Thanks, I was just curious because we use this same device on our production line.  I havn't seen the specific problem.

[kensign]

@MGould

Good to know - what OS are you using? So far I've only seen this problem with the new USB driver stack on Windows 8 and later.

[MGould]

We are still using Windows 7 everywhere.  I dont think we have any plans to move forward on our production floor (thank goodness).

[dk91]

Hi Katie,

I was wondering if you ever heard back from Pleora regarding the issue. I have the same issue - MAX doesn't even show the camera but in device manager, I see the same behavior. In my case, if I install NI IMAQdx driver, I can at least see the camera name listed using enumerate camera vi. Although it still fails to initialize - and I don't see it under MAX either.

I'm using Windows 10/LabVIEW 2014/IMAXdx 2016.

Thanks.

[kensign]

I checked back with Pleora this morning. Although they said they did make a fix for it last year, it still hasn't yet made it into a release. I followed up with them to see when they anticipate it will be released. For now, it's still listed as a known issue in their release notes.

@dk91 Are you sure that it's really the same issue? What's described by other posters is that the camera does show up in MAX but then there's an error when trying to open it. You mentioned that MAX doesn't even show the camera at all. That seems like a different problem to me. I would expect that if the enumerate cameras VI shows the camera, then MAX would too. Can you take screenshots of the exact situations you're describing?

-Katie

[jmdhk]

Hi Katie,

Sorry for the late response. I've been away from this project for awhile and now I'm trying to get back to this project.

MAX doesn't show the camera because I'm testing with evaluation license of VAS runtime. The camera is connected to my target machine (Windows 10 Pro) and it's only remotely available. I see the camera information when I enumerate connected cameras. Please see attached screenshots.

Any suggestion/recommendation are really appreciated.

Thank you.

dk91

[kensign]

I just wanted to circle back on this issue. In our latest (17.5) release (download here), we made a change on our end to mitigate this issue in a more targeted way than just changing the registry key.

In the future, if you're in this situation please just download an IMAQdx version 17.5 or later and you should not have this problem anymore. Please let me know if this is not the case for anyone.

If you were previously using this work around and then updated your IMAQdx, you should go back to your registry and change the key U3V_DisableEndpointStall to have a value of 0. As I mentioned before, that registry key disables ALL endpoint stalling, which in some edge cases could negatively impact the ability of the driver to recover from an error from the camera. The change to IMAQdx 17.5 is scoped to only disable the stalling of the control endpoints in a non-error case by default, so this should give you the benefits of the work around without any of the risk I mentioned above.

Please let me know if anyone experiences these issues anymore with U3V_DisableEndpointStall set to 0 (or not set at all) and IMAQdx 17.5 or later.

Thanks so much for your feedback!

Katie

Software Engineer, Vision Acquisition Software