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My color 1394 cameras decides to now show up in black and white?

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I am having a slight issue with my dual 1394 firewire camera setup.
I have two firewire cameras: one is black and white and one is color. When I built the application and ran it, everything was fine. This was the case for quite a while, but this morning, the color camera is only showing black and white (in MAX). When I run my application, it shows a black and white image quadrant (two are darker than the other two).
I currently use LV2010, and have MAX 4.7.7 installed, along with the most recent drivers. I also have to use the Legacy drivers 2.0.5, since I cannot use IMAQdx to run two cameras at the same time (due to setting properties of rate and speed). I tried reinstalling the drivers, but no luck. I do notice that if the camera is a generic 1394 camera under the IMAQdx folder, then the camera shows up in color. As soon as I switch it back to the Legacy driver, it goes back to black and white.
My questions are:
1. Is this a common issue with the legacy drivers?
2. Is there a better way to do dual firewire cameras using IMAQdx?
The images are continuously being grabbed, as the user needs them to position probes and other experimental devices in the viewing area. However, the images are snapped during the timed DAQ process, and saved as a jpg.
This is a strange problem, considering everything has worked fine before, and now all of a sudden the color camera does not show color. I checked the MAX settings to make sure it was set to color and not mono.
Any help of advice will be much appreciated.

I am having a slight issue with my dual 1394 firewire camera setup.
I have two firewire cameras: one is black and white and one is color. When I built the application and ran it, everything was fine. This was the case for quite a while, but this morning, the color camera is only showing black and white (in MAX). When I run my application, it shows a black and white image quadrant (two are darker than the other two).
I currently use LV2010, and have MAX 4.7.7 installed, along with the most recent drivers. I also have to use the Legacy drivers 2.0.5, since I cannot use IMAQdx to run two cameras at the same time (due to setting properties of rate and speed). I tried reinstalling the drivers, but no luck. I do notice that if the camera is a generic 1394 camera under the IMAQdx folder, then the camera shows up in color. As soon as I switch it back to the Legacy driver, it goes back to black and white.
My questions are:
1. Is this a common issue with the legacy drivers?2. Is there a better way to do dual firewire cameras using IMAQdx?
The images are continuously being grabbed, as the user needs them to position probes and other experimental devices in the viewing area. However, the images are snapped during the timed DAQ process, and saved as a jpg.
This is a strange problem, considering everything has worked fine before, and now all of a sudden the color camera does not show color. I checked the MAX settings to make sure it was set to color and not mono.
Any help of advice will be much appreciated.

 

Jody M.
The Procter and Gamble Co.

Currently using LV2018.
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Solution
Accepted by topic author z2830than

Has anything else changed on your computer?  Software/Driver installations?  One possibility that has happened is that the color images were being Bayer decoded previously, but now they are not.  I would check this parameter within Measurement & Automation Explorer to see if it Bayer decoding is turned on.  Here is a document that describes a related problem.  Does your current image exhibit a checkerboard pattern?

Zach C.
Field Engineer
Greater Los Angeles

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Zach,

 

Thanks for your help! The Bayer function was not working in MAX. What I ended up doing was reinstalling Legacy 2.0.5 again. However, this time I checked all of the subfolders for Labview support files (not sure why the installer had them not installed by default). Once I did that, I was able to change the Bayer settings to regain color. Then I was able to use the White Balance settings to get the color fine tuned to show correctly.

 

I also have another question for you or anyone else who may know. Is it possible to use IMAQdx to run two 1394 firewire cameras simulaneously? I have the cameras connected to a 800mbps PCI firewire board, but IMAQdx will not allow me to set the property nodes to ensure they both run at 200mbps.

Jody M.
The Procter and Gamble Co.

Currently using LV2018.
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