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IMAQdx and Pleora iPORT CL serial RS232 link ?

Hi

 

I have got a iPORT CL U3 from Pleora which converts Camera Link in USB3 vision. It works fine under USB3 vision driver ( and eBusPlayer example from Pleora) and with NI Imaqdx driver with NI Max explorer. In both cases, I capture images from my CL (Camera Link) Camera through the iPORT CL U3.

 But I have to configure my camera with the serial port of Camera Link. When I am under USB3 vision driver and I use c++ example from eBUS SDK of Pleora, it works fine. But I want to use CVI, NI Vision and the NI Imaqdx driver : in this case I don't find a way to access the serial communication of Camera Link via the Pleora iPort . Is it possible? Can i open the RS232 link of the Pleora iPORT under Imaqdx driver?

 

 Thanks a lot.

 

David

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Hi David,

 

The camera exposes the serial port using a selection of standard GenICam features that can be accessed as attributes in IMAQdx. If you just need to read/write raw serial commands, this is probably ok. If you need something that emulates a windows COM port, this won't work. If you are using some software that expects to talk to a CameraLink camera via CLAllSerial, you may be in luck because I thought at one point Pleora was working on a DLL that would implement this for their device through IMAQdx.

 

Another option is that I believe Pleora's CL U3 has some software mechanism for creating a specialized XML file and associated firmware that can be loaded to the unit to allow direct GenICam feature access to all the features you setup in their software. This would then allow native access to features inside of IMAQdx and is probably the best solution.


Eric

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Hi Eric,

 

 Thanks a lot for your answer. You are right, my Camera software expects to talk to a CameraLink camera via CLAllSerial to send my own commands. In fact, I build enterely my own camera (all from the CMOS 2D Array), and I manage all configuration via Camera Link serial link with clallserial.dll. It works fine with an Camera Link frame grabber ( EPIX one). But now, I want to use the iPORT CL U3 from Pleora with Nivision and my CVI project.

 I was looking for on the Pleora ressources Website and I didn't find a clallserial.dll equivalent for imaqdx and Pleora module .I will ask  them. Maybe you have a link or an article about it.

 I will come back if I find a solution.

 

David

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Eric,

 

I'm running into a similar issue.  I can't control the camera (thru the iPort CL-U3) with out sending it the proper serial commands.  You mentioned read/write raw serial commands, but I don't see how to do this with IMAQdx and the iPort CL-U3.

 

Thanks,

Harvard

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Hi Harvard,

 

Pleora exposes all the features necessary to send/receive serial traffic to the camera as features in their GenICam XML file. You would use a combination of attribute reads/writes as well as "attribute updated" events (these correspond to Genicam events) to interact with these features. The actual interaction is defined by Pleora and I am not familiar with, so you'd have to consult their manuals. You can look at some examples included in IMAQdx for interacting with attributes.

 

Eric

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Eric,

 

Thank you for your response.  I am quite familiar with using attribute reads/writes, but has far as I can tell there are no attributes that allow you to interact with the camera link serial connection provided by the IPort CL.  I believe that this is a limitation of using the NI USB3 camera driver rather than the Pleora camera driver which provides access to this serial channel.   

I recieved a response from Pleora tech support today that states "The serial communication link is proprietary to Pleora., so a 3rd party application such as Labview would not be able to use it. Currently this can only be done using the eBUS SDK".

 

As of right now I'm going to attempt to use the .NET interface to the Pleora driver in Labview.  If this is successful I should be able to grab frames thru the .NET interface and control the CL camera thru the virutal serial interface provided by the Pleora driver.

 

Regards,

Harvard

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This might be an old issue but found this on Pleora's support page: 

"In some cases, you may be unable to connect the National Instruments Measurement & Automation Explorer (MAX) tool to the CL-U3. Issue ID 9477. To work around this issue on the Windows operating system, modify the registry. Please consult the Microsoft Windows documentation for precautions before modifying the registry.

  • Under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SYSTEM > CurrentControlSet > services > niimaqdxk > Parameters.
  • Add a new DWORD (32-bit) Value called U3V DisableEndpointStall. 
  • Modify the data to have a value of 1." 

More information here: https://supportcenter.pleora.com/s/article/iPORT-CL-U3-External-Frame-Grabber-Firmware-and-Release-N...

 

 

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Bit of a long shot since the post was in 2016 but...

 

I have exactly the same problem - did you ever manage to get video via the eBus SDK into LabVIEW?

I've had a go with the SDK via the .net route but it's not very straightforward!

 

Thanks

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Hi SuperDuperCooper,

 

Yes, we were able to get video via the eBus SDK into Labview and we have been using the iPortCL with our cameralink cameras for the last few years.  I will see if I can dig out some  Labview code that uses the .NET SDK and i'll post it here.

 

Harv

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Hi Harv

 

Did you ever find a code snippet you could post?  It would be very helpful for my application as well.

 

Thanks!

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