Multi-Camera-Link Vision Acquisition using .avi

[lyncheb]

So I'm trying to use two Camera-Link Cameras (JAI CM-200-MCL) with the NI PCIe 1430 frame grabber in order to obtain video of a y-axis tensile testing project, and I'm relatively new to the whole LabVIEW experience. Essentially, I want to be able to capture every image of the testing process, so I can correlate the tensile testing results with specific images using the same sample clock, (e.g. data taken at 30 seconds match the image taken at 30 seconds). I'm trying to put everything together in piece and I already have a fairly stable, working tensile testing program written for LabVIEW 2009. I'm now in the process of using IMAQ (4.4) to track these images and save them as a .avi file. I've provided some sample code -- although it currently isn't working -- that's very simplistic.

Questions:

1. Is there an even simpler way?

2. Can I sync the tensile testing VI and the Vision VI by placing the Vision VI in the Tensile Testing VI inside an event structure that's triggered by the "start" button. (Boolean)

Thanks 

[Kristoff2]

lyncheb,

How accurately do you want your test and images to by synchronized (second, millisecond...)?  If you only need to be accurate to around 1 second then software timing would work.  However if you need sub milisecond accuracy you will want to use hardware triggering.  The 1430 is capable of hardware triggering over a RTSI line.  See page 16 (2-4) of the user manual here: http://www.ni.com/pdf/manuals/372016a.pdf

What kind of data are you logging?  What hardware / software are you using to log this data?

Regards,

Sam K

Applications Engineer

National Instruments

[lyncheb]

Sammy_K,

I can have a lag of about 10-20 milliseconds, so I didn't opt for hardware triggering. I'm using a tensile testing program called WinTest that's created by Bose for their Electroforce line of testing devices, and I have a VI that essentially just calls WinTest to run minimized. So all the images captured in LabVIEW will have to be matched to the saved .txt data generated from WinTest. Essentially the values captured will tell me properties of the material based on its resistance to compression, tension, etc. I'm using LabVIEW vision acquisition to film the process. I'd obviously like to consolidate the VI's as much as possible.

Hope this gives you more context,

Evan

[Kristoff2]

lyncheb,

If a lag of 10-20 ms is acceptable you should be able to start both tasks in a flat sequence structure (or event if you prefer) to synchronize their starts.  Give it a shot and if it is not good enough you can look into better (hardware) options.

Let us know how it goes of if there is anything else we can do for you.

Regards,

Sam K

Applications Engineer

National Instruments