External trigger for Hamamatsu firewire under LabWindows/CVI

[KreatorM]

Hi all,

we are moving in our experimental control system made in LabWindows/CVI from Hamamatsu C9100-02 connected by a CameraLink to Hamamatsu ImagEM X2 C9100-23B connected by firewire IEEE1394b.

National Instruments has moved support for IEEE1394b cameras from IMAQ to IMAQdx, and some features that works under IMAQ does not work under IMAQdx, particularly two important for us, changing from internal to external trigger and setting EEM amplification.

We have tried two ways:

1) IMAQdx. - Both Ni-MAX and IMAQdx see only a small part of the DCAM attributes that are supposed to be available in the camera. Triggering source is not included there. Moreover, if I set the trigger source in an external program provided by Hamamatsu, opening camera by IMAQdxOpenCamera resets all properties to default, including switching back to an internal trigger.

2) DCAM-API and DCAM-SDK4 – it’s a dll plus a set of include files and .lib provided by Hamamtsu. While I can compile the program, the linker throws out “error: Undefined symbol “ for SOME of the functions from this api. So, I generated with LabWindows a new .lib from dll and .h and indeed, only part of the functions from .h is registered in .lib. Some are missing, including the one to open and connect to the camera…

Anybody has a similar problem? Any ideas?

Stay well,

Michał Z.

[KreatorM]

Hi all,

following my question I was able to move a little further.

I have removed Hamamatsu DCAM-API and SDK, and I was able to connect to the camera by NI version of IIDC, but only after I did downgrade the NI IMAXdx to version 19.5 that is four years old. It appears that National Instrument removed support for
DCAM IEEE1394 cameras 4 years ago considering it obsolete (even if it is present in the newest Hamamatsu cameras).

Do you know how I can connect to the DCAM IEEE1394 with the newest software?

Moreover, two of the camera attributes seems to be not accessible over IIDC, namely gain and temperature (because min_val=max_value and I cannot set it different).

Attribute: CameraAttributes::Gain::Value
Display Name: Camera Attributes::Gain::Value
Description: Gets/sets the current value for the Gain camera
attribute.
ToolTip: Gets/sets the current value for the Gain camera attribute.
Type: 0x2
Units:
Availability: RW
Representation: 0x0
Visibility: 0x1000
Streamable: true
Minimum: 1
Maximum: 1
Increment: 1
Current value: 1
Validating current value: PASSED
Setting current value WITHOUT validation: PASSED
Setting current value WITH validation: PASSED

Attribute: CameraAttributes::Temperature::Target
Display Name: Camera Attributes::Temperature::Target
Description: Gets/sets the current Target value for the
Temperature camera attribute.
ToolTip: Gets/sets the current Target value for the
Temperature camera attribute.
Type: 0x2
Units:
Availability: RW
Representation: 0x0
Visibility: 0x1000
Streamable: true
Minimum: 2082
Maximum: 2082
Increment: 1
Current value: 1732
Validating current value: PASSED
Setting current value WITHOUT validation: PASSED
Setting current value WITH validation: PASSED

Has anyone had a similar problem?

Stay well,

Michal Z