ICD File Woes

[Rodney Elliott]

Hi All,

I have designed and built a custom camera using a Kodak KAC-9648 CMOS 10-bit imager, and am having a great deal of trouble interfacing my board to my PCI-1422 framegrabber.

I have come across another post on the outputs required by the PCI-1422 to interpret the incoming data properly - ie three blanking pixels per line and three blanking lines per frame. My first question is thus:

1. If my camera is presenting pclk, hclk and vclk to the PCI-1422 as required (and the ICD file is configured correctly), am I right in thinking that I should get image data out of the framegrabber, no matter what is present on the pixel lines? I am convinced that if the clocking lines are correct then NIMAQ should lock on and display the frame even if the pixel data was garbage. Yes/no?

Now I was originally using a Kodak KAC-1310 development board with my PCI-1422, and have been looking at its ICD file in order to determine what to put in my new one. I am at a loss to understand all of the fields it contains - especially AcquistionWindow and the effect it has.

2. Is there any way that I can get NI to generate a ICD file for me, is there any documentation for the ICD file, or any sort of configuration utility etc?

I have spent way to long trying to figure out why NIMAQ is not displaying data and so any help on this would be most welcome.

[Rodney Elliott]

In addition, with regards to the ppt sheet showing the clocking requirements of the PCI-1422, can anyone from NI tell me if its actually necessary for hsync to toggle during the vsync blanking time between frames, ie is the pixel clock sufficient or do I need to "fake" three blanking lines as well...

[David S.]

Hi Rodney -

You can contact NI about creating a camera file by contacting your local sales representative.  We do not commonly create files for camera that will not be mass-produced, but I don't want to speak out of turn.  I recommend you talk to a salesperson, who can contact the development team for further information.

NI does offer a Camera File Generator utility (see link) for creating your own digital camera files.  It will enforce hardware limitations like the necessary blanking pixels you mentioned.  If you choose to create your own icd's, I recommend using the utility to make your life much easier.

(Please note that NI cannot support any camera files you attempt to create.  The utility is provided to help advanced users who are comfortable with creating their own camera files.  However, because we don't have access to your camera hardware, we can't debug a problematic camera file that you've written.)