suboptimal frame rate from NI grabber

[go9kata]

Dear forum members,

I am using a frame grabber NI PCIe-1433 together with Basler acA2040-180km. Theoretical frame rate for the camera is 180 FPS, where the theoretical data flow of the frame grabber is 850 MB/s.

I am aiming at (1024x1024) pixel/frame * 8 bits/pixel * 100 frame/second =~ 104.86 MB/second

When I try the given C example with the IMAQ driver of LLGrab.c, it calculates a frame rate of ~22 frames per second. I reach similar value while running the camera through MatLab's Image Acquisition toolbox.
Under the C driver the IMG_ATTR_MAX_FRAME_RATE or IMG_ATTR_FRAME_RATE are not available properties for that frame grabber.
Under NI MAX I get at the lower right corner:
Frames per second: 22,22(displayer, acquired)

So it looks like it is not transition problem from the card to the computer, but somehow the configuration is wrong for the image acquisition from the frame grabber.
I use the default file for the frame grabber, where I only substitute the dimension attributes.
Any idea of how can I increase the frame rate or how to control that value will be very helpful.

Thank you in advance!

Cheers,
go9kata

[BruceAmmons]

I will guess that your exposure time is more than 10 msec.  This makes the frame rate slow down.  For initial testing, set a very short exposure time, then once you have the rate you want you can increase the exposure time.

Bruce

[go9kata]

Thank you for the first reply and remark. I forgot to mention that important detail. When the exposure time is changed to 10, 5, 1, 0.5 or 0.1 it doesn't affect the above mentioned frames per second measurement.

[BlueCheese]

Have you tried looking at the camera settings configured in Pylon? There are many different features that are interrelated with the frame rate and could cause it to go slower.

[go9kata]

So installing the Pylon software did not help much, because it detects the camera but can not grab image because of a weired error. After speaking with someone from Basler, the advice was to put the TAB configuration to maximum (10) and the pixel clock to 82 MHz. I check the configuration files available for Basler acA2040-180km on:

ftp://ftp.ni.com/support/imaq/camera_support/camera_files/digital/basler/

There I can find a file dated from 2012, with NumCameraTaps set to 10. Unfortunately that file can not be used throwind an error 0xBFF6001F "Es kann keine Video-Quelle gefunden werden."

With the installation of the IMAQ I got another file for the same camera model under the name: Basler acA2040-180km (Base). With that file I am able to run the camera but the NumCameraTaps is set to 2. 

So I guess the slow frame rate might be due to non optimal pixel read out. Any discussions or suggestions are welcome. Thank you in advance!

[go9kata]

To add something ... at the moment the camra is connected to the frame grabber with only one MDR to SDR cable. If I need to use a higher TAB value in the case of 10, do I need to connect the second port on the Basler camera:

both camera link cables together like:

camera B -> 0 frame grabber

camera F -> 1 frame grabber

can this be the "device not detected" error from the camera file with higher TAB?

[BruceAmmons]

I would assume you need to have both cables connected to get the highest possible frame rate.  It wouldn't make sense otherwise.

Bruce