Opening NTSC.icd on startup (IMAQ)

[afafafafafaf]

I want to open The NTSC.icd file automatically when measurement and automation program starts up. Rather than going through the following steps:

My System->Devices and Interfaces->IMAQ pci1411->channel0> then NTSC file

It would be good if i can just go straight to the channel0 NTSC file.

[mhaag]

Hello,

Thank you for contacting National Instruments. I am not sure if I fully understand what you would like to happen. In Measurement & Automation Explorer (MAX) if you associate a channel with NTSC, RS170, or one of the other standards, then those channels will retain that setting. You should not have to reassociate a given channel with NTSC every time.

You will have to click to expand those few folders in order to get to the channel every time MAX opens, but that should only take a matter of seconds and nothing else should be needed. Also, generally I continually have MAX open, even if I am running program in LabVIEW or any other API, that way I do not have to continually reopen MAX.

If this does not answer what you were asking, then please let us
know and we will see what else we can do for you.

Regards,
Michael
Applications Engineer
National Instruments

[afafafafafaf]

"...You will have to click to expand those few folders in order to get to the channel every time MAX opens..."

I would like a shortcut that would take me straight to the channel with out expanding through folders when MAX startup each time.

I looked at "Explore IMAQ" shortcut and there a focus command used to highlight Devices and Interfaces. I would like something similar which also expands the folders inside the devices and interfaces and start playing video(NTSC) automatically once MAX is started.

MAX will be used by different users to take snap shots of or view video feed taken from a combustor. And i am just trying to make it easier for them.

Thank you for all your help.

[mhaag]

Unfortunately there is not a way to automatically expand out the tree structure in MAX. MAX contains a lot of great features, but in the end is designed to be a debugging and configuration tool rather than your end application. From your description it sounds like it does contain the tools you need, but you may simply need to instruct the users on the couple of folders that need to be expanded. Or as I mentioned in my last post, you can leave MAX open and even resize the middle section so that the user can not see the left pane where you select different channels.

However, in the end I would probably recommend using a simple LabVIEW example (or another API's program) that you can program to simply display your video and snap pictures. There are
a number of examples included with the NI-IMAQ driver for LabVIEW, C, C++, and VB to accomplish this and provide a very clean and customizable interface.

Regards,
Michael
Applications Engineer
National Instruments