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AXIS 213 Camera

I have looked at several posts on the board regarding capturing an image from a webcam using labview and activex.  I am trying to do the same with an AXIS 213 PTZ Network Camera.  I am not having any luck so far as I do not have any experience in building dlls to hold the activex object, and I am not sure where to find the activex object to put into the dll.  If anyone has any experience with doing this especially if it was with an AXIS Network Camera then I would greatly appreciate any help or possibly an example vi if possible.

Cheers!
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Hi jmcbee,

In all likelyhood, the camera comes with a driver that exposes ActiveX controls. Once you have this driver, it is pretty simple to make calls to it through LabVIEW. You can look at the ActiveX examples in LabVIEW to see how this is done.

They seem to have a Video capture driver (http://www.axis.com/techsup/software/capture_driver/index.htm) that can stream to third party software. But you would need to find documentation on the dll to know which methods to call.

Jaidev

 

 

Senior Product Manager
National Instruments
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Thank you very much for pointing me in the correct direction Jaidev!

Cheers!
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Hello,

I have downloaded the driver software and am looking over ActiveX examples but am still not clear on how to actually put a vi together that will call activeX methods that will allow me to interact with my device.  Am I correct that I need to have, in this case, the AXIS Video Capture Driver installed on my machine and know what methods the driver users in order to call these same methods within LabVIEW?  If this is true then I have to somehow create a dll that will point towards the AXIS Video Capture Driver to use its activeX methods?  As I mentioned this is new territory for me so I apologize if my questions are nonsense.  Any help will be appreciated!

Cheers!
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After some poking around I have discovered the LabVIEW ActiveX Container.  It seems that I can place the ActiveX Control for the camera I am using and then access the methods and properties.  I am not sure if this is the appropriate way to approach this problem or not but I am going to spend some time on it now.
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This is exactly the appropriate way if you have an ActiveX control. But sometimes it can still be quite tricky to find the correct properties and methods, especially when a property points to a subobject or when the data type is variant.
If the ActiveX interface isn't very simple, I recommend looking for some documentation (probably on the vendor's website).

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I am beginning to see what you mean, the methods and properties are labeled well but the methods have their own inputs that will require some proper documentation to be used correctly.   I havent come across anything on their webpage yet and they are closed today for the holiday.  I suppose if I cant stumble upon the answer today that it will have to wait until later in the week.

Cheers!
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You could also use the HTTP interface (VAPIX) instead of ActiveX. The AXIS cameras have an integrated webserver which allows easy HTTP access. It should be quite easy to get an image using a simple GET command. You can use the Internet toolkit to do that or use the ActiveX (again 😉 ) interface to control the Internet Explorer. For this you'll find examples here in the forum.


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Hi Jmcbee,

I know there has been quite a long time since this thread was created, but right now I have the same problem as you (controlling and acquiring from an AXIS camera (this time AXIS 241Q)). Well, I am interested to know how you managed to solve this problem !
Thanks, and best regards.

Laurent Nguyen
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Hello LoloN,

I didnt make much progress on this product.  Before I could really get going on it my company decided that it wasn't a priority.  Unfortunately I cannot offer much advice, aside from what you read in this post.  Good luck!


Cheers
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