Can I use Smart Camera 1742 in the Color Tracking Example?

[Ihab]

Hello,

I am going to use a two set of colored balls namely (Yellow and Blue).

I want to put them on the ground.

I have two Robots.

I would like one of the robot go and track the yellow (Light Gray Color) and the second robot will track the blue balls (Dark Gray Color).

This will be done on the stage  during the presentation on 4th July 2012.

I hope this would work.

We have  NI LabVIEW Robotics Starter Kit

We have also a Smart Camera NI 1742 and 1762

We would like to use the Color Tracking /example in Vision using this camera.

First

we managed to see the camera in Max.

Second 

We added it as a target in the Project.

We added the VI to the target

When running we had  a conflict with the software version

We managed to format it using Max and it became in Safe Mode (No Software installed).

How can I transfer the  matching version software with LABVIEW Robotics Software?

Many thanks in Advance for your help and support.

Ihab

[Christian Mergl]

I'm not very familiar with the Robotics Kit and the example you are talking about, but the SmartCameras 1742 and 1762 are not capable of acquiering color images, just grayscale.

So if this example works with color operations you might need to convert the image to U32 and teach the "colors".

Christian

[Ihab]

Dear Chris,

Many thanks,

I understand the color problem and Monochrome problem, therefore I mentioned in My previous post I will use yellowand blue balls. These balls could be tracked by monochrome camera as light gray (yellow) AND DARK GRAY (BLUE).

Now my problem is in the Color Tracking Example.

Do you have any link to example to show Live Video from Smart Camera NI 1742 Directly on Labview ?

Please send it to me.

 I opened the Block Diagram, double clicked on the VisionAcquisition Icon (Express VI) I tried to connect to my smart camera. There is a problem of conflict between the twosoftware on the Desktop, and on the Camera.

I went to Max again, formatted the Camera, transferred existing software On Desktop to Camera, Now both software(Desktop and Camera ) are same version. The program runs but it returns  can not find image and color plane?.

I need  help in the example now.

The IMAQdx appears in the list of software but does not have any thing under it, but the camera appears in theRemote system as I mentioned? Do you think that this might be part of the problem I facing in the Example?

The Reason I opened such discussion in the Vision part, because you mentioned that I posted on the wrong thread,since I am new to the forum, I did not what to do., and I need urgent reply before the program ends, I thought someother users might access the Vision section and do not look at the General version.

Many thanks in advance for your support and understanding.

Best Regards.

Ihab

[Christian Mergl]

---

@Ihab wrote:

..... 

I understand the color problem and Monochrome problem, therefore I mentioned in My previous post I will use yellowand blue balls. These balls could be tracked by monochrome camera as light gray (yellow) AND DARK GRAY (BLUE).

Now my problem is in the Color Tracking Example.

....

---

But you didn't understand that a monochrom camera like the 1744 returns an 8bit image which is not a supported image datatype for color operations. So you either convert the image to U32 as I said before or you think about other algorithms to detect the balls.

---

@Ihab wrote:

....

Do you have any link to example to show Live Video from Smart Camera NI 1742 Directly on Labview ?

Please send it to me.

.... 

---

No, I don't have such an example. But the easiest way would be to run a grab example at the smart cam and transfer the image via an shared variable (configured as image datatype) to the host application.

---

@Ihab wrote:

....

I opened the Block Diagram, double clicked on the VisionAcquisition Icon (Express VI) I tried to connect to my smart camera. There is a problem of conflict between the twosoftware on the Desktop, and on the Camera.

I went to Max again, formatted the Camera, transferred existing software On Desktop to Camera, Now both software(Desktop and Camera ) are same version. The program runs but it returns  can not find image and color plane?.

I need  help in the example now.

---

The error can be explained by the type mismatch of the image, U8 (grayscale) instead of U32 (color).

---

@Ihab wrote:

....

The IMAQdx appears in the list of software but does not have any thing under it, but the camera appears in theRemote system as I mentioned? Do you think that this might be part of the problem I facing in the Example?

The Reason I opened such discussion in the Vision part, because you mentioned that I posted on the wrong thread,since I am new to the forum, I did not what to do., and I need urgent reply before the program ends, I thought someother users might access the Vision section and do not look at the General version.

....

---

The Smart Camera is a Stand-Alone Realtime System, this is why it appears under your Network Environment in MAX.

When you look at NI IMAQdx devices under your computer it will show you cameras connected to your computer via Firewire, GigE, USB or IP Cameras, but not Smart Cameras!

Hope this helps,

Christian