Colour 1429

[Gary7811]

Hi. Could you please tell me if the PCIe-1429 supports colour images. Thanks.

[AdamB]

Yep,

But only if the camera does! 🙂

AdamB

[Gary7811]

Good! I have a colour Basler A504kc camera. I just can't seem to see colour when I grab frames using MAX. Is there a setting I need to adjust.

[AdamB]

Hi again,

Do you have the right camera file for the camera?

http://sine.ni.com/apps/utf8/nipc.product?pid=3803

it might also be a case of setting up the right bayer settings.  The manufacturer shoule give you the bayer information and you just need to match this inside of MAX (bayer settings)

Post back if you still have a problem

Thanks

AdamB

[Gary7811]

I've already downloaded the camera file, which works fine in greyscale. I thought it might be due to setting the bayer pattern as you suggested. However, I can't seem to find the settings anywhere. Cheers.

[Gary7811]

Just to add to that. I read in the help file something about a Bayer Colour tab, but I can't find it. Also the camera file says A504k, which is a greyscale camera, even though I downloaded the one from the A504kc webpage.

[AdamB]

Ah!

Well that's the problem then.  We need to make sure you have the right camera file.  I don't suppose Basler have any on their support pages do they?

I can't seem to find one at the moment.  It is sometimes the case that we haven't caught up with the manufacturer to create the appropriate camera file and so you may have to update the file yourself.

However there is some good news.  We have developed a program that will help you do this it's called the Camera file generator and it can be found here.

If you have a look at the resources tab of the first link you should get a good understanding of what you would need to do in order to update your camera file.

I would however still try the manufacturer.

Thanks

AdamB

[Gary7811]

Hi. I installed the camera file generator. I selected selected Basler manufacturer and typed A504kc for model. Acquisition timeout 3000ms. Maximum scan size 1280x1024. The NI 1429 IMAQ device was already selected.

But according to the camera specifications there are 10 eight-bit taps, but the camera file generator only allows a maximum of 8. When I click "grab" I get an acquisition timeout error for anything but the tiniest AOI.

[JamesC]

Hi Gary,

Can you try and acquire a colour image from your camera, I know it will come back as a blocky greyscale image. Please can you then save the image as BMP file. It must be a bitmap file, jpg will lose the information we need. Then we can apply a bayer decoding algorithm in a VI, to convert back to colour.

There is so much information being passed down the cameralink cable, that sending the data as a colour image is not feasable, because memory would not be able to handle the amount of data. Even with the decoding algoritm, you might find you run into memory spped issues with this method.

Regards
JamesC
NIUK and Ireland

[Gary7811]

Hi,

Actually, I managed to use the Bayer decoder in a VI to retrieve the colour image. I can also see colour in the White Balancing Utility. It just seems to be MAX where it only works in greyscale now.

Cheers