Camera Link serial VIs

[proveris01]

Just a small correction to blitzcraig's response above:

I don't think you don't want to use the Code Interface Node, but the "Call Library Function Node" to call a DLL.

- John

[blitzcraig]

yes, sorry.  the call library function is the one for DLL calls.

[RichMig]

Thanks John and Blitz.

The problem using the NI board was with reading the reply from the camera, even with read bytes.  I was one the phone with NI for hours about it.

My problem is that I have no experience with using the "Call Library Function Node".  Thats why I use Labview.  I never got beyond "hello world" in Kernigy and Ritchie.

[J.C._Flores]

Hi everyone... so in finding and reading this thread, did anyone ever develop and/or find these CameraLink Serial VIs?  I'm working on a project now using a Bitflow framegrabber and need to use the CL serial port to talk with the camera.  As stated in previous msgs on this thread, I can't use the IMAQ VIs since this is not an NI framegrabber.  Thanks.

-J.C..

[blitzcraig]

I WAS able to use the serial command VIs!  It worked beautifully, all my serial commands to the camera went over cameralink by opening an instance and sending my strings.  Let me know how well the bitflow framegrabber works for you.  I was looking at the 4 channel cameralink grabber for another project.

[J.C._Flores]

Hi Blitz,

Thanks for the feedback.  Can you explain your setup so I can understand how you were able to use the IMAQ serial VIs?  Were you using an NI framegrabber or a 3rd party board like Bitflow?  If you have an example, I'd like to see them. 

A quick update on my progress, I was able to find a copy of the CameraLink standard and have been generating VI wrappers around the clallserial.dll file functions.  So far, clSerialInit, clGetPortInfo, and clGetNumPorts seem to work fine.

Thanks!

-J.C..

[blitzcraig]

J.C.,

I was using the NI dual-channel cameralink framegrabber (1430) to capture and control two Geospatial MS-3100 cameras.  The IMAQ serial commands were used to send  & receive monitor/control commands between the cameras and computer.  Because I was using an NI framegrabber, the capturing was simple, my control strings were the complicated part.  I built a command string (as per my cameras specifications) and loaded it into the Cameralink serial send.  I then read the response from my camera using Cameralink serial receive.  As far as talking to your framegrabber, I am not sure what to suggest other than Bitflow told me during a product demo that they provide full support for labview (they said they provide a toolkit to do all the lowlevel communications).  Let me know how it goes as I am interested in Bitflows framegrabbers (but only if they play well with labview).

[RichMig]

I have a bitflow board and the need to use Labview to communicate serially to a camera.  I had recently email Bitflow about it and just recieved a reply"

"Currently we do not have a VI that provides access to the serial port on our Camera Link board. The fact that this is not provided by National Instrument somewhat surprising to us. The Camera Link serial communications API is a industry standard which can be used to access any frame grabber in the system (provided the frame grabber manufacture provides the appropriate DLL, which we do). From our point of view, this should be an integral part of the frame grabber access package (IMAQ). That said, since it is not currently available from NI, we are looking in what it would take to provided. Currently we just at the investigation stage, and do not yet have anything scheduled.

If you are comfortable writing VIs, the Camera Link serial API is quite simple, and you only need to "wrap" a C function in a VI in order to access the serial port."

Well, I'm not expert enough to "wrap" a C function and am looking for help.

[J.C._Flores]

Hello everyone,

A fellow wireworker (Bruce Moyer) e-mailed me a link to another NI forum where he uploaded a CameraLink v1.1 spec set of VIs he developed to bypass the NI-IMAQ serial VIs.  This driver set is especially useful if you're using non-NI framegrabbers as is the case with my project.  The link to the forum is as follows (look at the last post for the attachment):

http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=200&message.id=9861

I've already started using them and they work great!  There's one VI missing from the archive which I've attached to this post.

Huge props to Bruce!

[RichMig]

Mr. Flores, you have saved me.  Thank you so much, this was just what I needed.  Within an hour I had all the sub-vi's I needed written and tested.