LabVIEW
Interfacing FLIR T335 camera with LabView
A LabVIEW installation in itself does absolutely nothing in terms of adding support for cameras. You will also need to install the Vision Acquisition Software (VAS) and the Vision Development Module (VDM). The first adds drivers to the system to access certain cameras, the second a library of functions to analyze and process images.
Both do require a separate license though.
@Pukhtun_Yum wrote:
Also, is Vision Development Module not included in VAS package ?
Not at all. The VAS package only contains a very small part of the VDM software to allow displaying an acquired picture at all on a LabVIEW front panel. The bigger part of the VDM is not included.
As to the fact that no icons appear under the Vision & Motion palatte there are two reasons I can think of for that.
- You installed the VAS package before you installed LabVIEW. Drivers only install support for LabVIEW versions they can find on the system.
- You didn't yet restart LabVIEW after installing VAS
- Your palette visibility is not yet set to also show the new entries. A default LabVIEW installation has usually many advanced palettes set to invisible to not overwhelm new users.
The VAS is mainly NI-IMAQ and IMAQdx. NI-IMAQ is the old legacy acquisition API for old analog NI frame grabbers. I believe NI does not sell any of those boards anymore as they are obsolete and most likely use components that couldn't even be purchased anymore even if NI wanted to produce them.
IMAQdx is the new style acquisition API that supports the more modern digital frame grabber cards from NI, DirectX compatible camera drivers and also certain Firewire and Ethernet cameras. "Certain" because it requires cameras to follow the Genicam standard in order to be able to recognize and support them. And not every camera claiming to support Genicam is easy or even possible to be used with IMAQdx, since as with most standards there are many possible differences in what of the standard a device does support or not.
In addition to that, the VAS comes with a few VIs that are also included in the VDM in order to actually display the images from above two acquisition APIs in LabVIEW. No analysis or image processing functions are included though, that is all part of the VDM.
If you use an NI frame grabber board, a license to use the IMAQdx API with it is included. If you want to access other cameras with IMAQdx you need to purchase a seperate license for the VAS.
If you want to use the VDM you need a seperate license for that too. This does not apply for the few basic Vision functions also included in the VAS.
@Pukhtun_Yum wrote:
Is the VAS package and VDM free or do I have to buy it ?
No! When I said you need a license I meant a license you have to buy. The only exception for the VAS is when you use an NI frame grabber board which comes with a license to use the according acquisition API from the VAS.
You can download both the VAS and VDM and install them and you can activate an evaluation period of I think 9 days but after that you have to purchase a license if you want to keep using it.
