RT: Synchronize camera and flash

[oantonio255]

Hello. I have an image capture application in which we use a special flash. In the past, we have faced the issue of images having different luminosities, which seems to be caused by a lack of synchronization between the camera and the flash (a random delay between the firing of the flash and the photo capture). We are implementing a new version of our system this time using a compact RIO. The user interface runs on a pc but the flash and the camera are directly connected to the cRIO. I have no experience with real time systems, so I’m not sure how to achieve the synchronization. That is, we expect the image to be captured a specific amount of time after the flash was fired. What is the best way to do this? Is this what timed sequences are for? Thanks

[SSPTest]

What kind of camera are you using? Does it have hardware trigger functionality?  Does your flash have hardware triggering too?  What kind of I/O modules do you have in your compactRIO?  The best option here will be to use a digital output signal as a hardware trigger to acquire an image and strobe the flash on the same rising/falling edge.  Many camera will also allow you to set a trigger delay in case you want to start acquisition (exposure) a short time after the trigger is actually received.

A timed loop or sequence might be able to synchronize things enough if hardware triggering is not an option.  You can learn more those structures here: http://zone.ni.com/reference/en-XX/help/371361M-01/lvconcepts/con_timed_structs/

[oantonio255]

Thanks for the answer. The camera is just an analog camera connected through the Movimed AF1501. It does. My "flash" is not really a flash but a custom made LED lamp, controlled with the ni 9474. Those two are the only modules I have in the cRIO.

So you think the best option is using hardware triggers and not through programming?

[Jacobson-ni]

In almost all applications, hardware triggers are going to be better synchronized than any software trigger you could develop. Not knowing anything specific about your camera, I would agree that synchronization should be done through hardware triggering.