Camera Video Format Not Reading

[parkerg]

   We have recently hooked up a boson 320 thermal camera for some ir camera research. The camera supports two video modes 640x512 I420 and 320x256 Y16. We have been able to get the camera to stream video using the I420 mode, but have not using the Y16 mode. Unfortunately, we need to get the Y16 format as this contains the raw camera data but the I420 does not.

   Under NI Max, there are two video modes present, the I420 and a 320x256 unknown. When trying to read using the 320x256 mode it gives an error code of 0x80040217 and states its an undetermined error. Using the vision express module, and going into its front panel, I can set

AcquisitionAttributes::VideoMode = "320x256 Y16 60.00fps" but this doesn't work, whearas 

AcquisitionAttributes::VideoMode = "640x512 I420 60.00fps" works no problem.

    I know the camera supports this mode, as I can see video in the Y16 mode using the manufactures application, but have no way to integrate with everything else I'm doing within labview.

   Any help will be appreciated.

[Frankay]

This looks like a similar issue to this older forum: https://forums.ni.com/t5/Machine-Vision/Using-Y8-Y16-pixel-format-in-LabVIEW-through-DirectShow/td-p...

Essentially Y16 is not a true "grayscale" format so it is not supported by IMAQdx. After doing some searching I'm not sure of a super obvious way to get the raw data. I am thinking you may be able to do some Bayer decoding and I found this forum that talks about it a little bit too: https://forums.ni.com/t5/Machine-Vision/get-UVC-truly-raw-data/m-p/3614443

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Aaron F.

National Instruments

[parkerg]

After doing some reading, that's the same conclusion that I came too.

Since the camera operates through both usb video as well as the serial port to update camera parameters, I was able to grab an image using the serial port by reading an image from the cameras internal frame buffer. However, this mode is very slow (1 frame per second), but since we are interested in time lapse footage instead of real time video, this will work.

Thanks for the input.