NI 1742 exception problem

[Juurma]

Hi People,

I am having a problem with the NI 1742 Smart camera unit. It worked just fine until I tried to connect it thotough a router. The 1742 connects, but when I tried to acquire images/conf acquisition parameters with MAX it says it has software exceptions problems (the status LED blinks 4 times). I reinstalled the software-same error, put it into safe mode and reinstalled,  no change. Connected it to the development computer directly with the settings that had worked before and as it did not have any change proceeded as latter - no changes, still the same error.

Does anyone have any ideas what to do next?

Thanks in advance,

Märt Juurma

[BlueCheese]

Hi Matt,

I'm not sure about the exception you're still seeing after going back to the original install. However, I'm curious about your problem of connecting through a router. In that case, was this a router doing network address translation (like a home router) or just a normal router between subnets?

-Eric

[Juurma]

Hi Eric,

Yes, this was a NAT router. Could that have done someting unusual?

-Märt

[BlueCheese]

Hi Mart,

No, things should still work correctly. I was just curious because NAT tends to break things when there are protocols that either need IP addresses embedded in them or require the client to connect back to the host. However, this should not be the case with the protocol used to configure the smart camera from within MAX and display images. To confirm this, I just tested configuring a smart camera over NAT and did not have any problems configuring it and acquiring image from MAX.

I'm suspecting something unrelated may be the problem here. What software components and versions do you have installed down to the smart camera? Does the exception happen only when you try to configure the camera in MAX? Is it when you click on the camera or start a snap/grab? Is it possible your host PC has some corrupted software pieces installed that getting installed to the smart camera? Can you use another host PC to reformat and reinstall the components onto the smart camera?

-Eric

[Jack J.]

Hello Mart,

Sorry to hear that you are having this issue. I think we can get to the bottom of this by doing a little bit of troubleshooting.

First, do you have the breakout cable for the 15-Pin DSUB connector of the camera. If so, you can access the Serial Rx/Tx pins of the smart camera. You can wire these to the Tx/Rx pins of a regular serial plug and wire plug it into a serial port of your computer. Then follow these steps:

1. Set the Console dip switch on the bottom of the smart camera to ON
2. Connect the serial port discussed above to your computer
3. Open Hyperterminal and start a connection with the following parameters:
• Baud Rate: 9600
• Data Bits: 8
• Parity: None
• Stop Bits: 1
• Flow Control: None
4. Restart the smart camera
5. The boot information should appear on the hyperterminal window. Copy these messages and sent the information to us.

Looking at this information, we will be better able to tell what is happening on the inside.

Hope we can get you up and running quickly again.

Regards,

Jack J.
Product Support Engineer
National Instruments

[Juurma]

Hi all,

The camera connects to the workstation, I can change the network settings (in MAX), but the acquiring part is disabled - gives the exception error.

So, I recorded the boot sequence. I suspect it did not record 100% of it but lets hope it is enough.

Best regards,

Märt

[Juurma]

One more thing - I am using LV 8.5 with RT module 8.5, Vision Development Module 8.5 and Acquisition software 8.5.1 which were included with the 1742 unit

- Märt

[Jack J.]

Hello Mart,

From the serial log, it appears that many of the modules are being loaded twice (hence the duplicate module errors).

I think at this point we would like to replicate your system here. Can you please send us the entire disk image of your smart camera? Follow the instructions below to do this:

1. Boot the camera into safe mode
2. FTP into the camera using either IE or Firefox.
3. Copy the entire contents of the camera to your host
4. Zip up the contents and give it a unique name
5. Place the zip file on ftp://ftp.ni.com/incoming
6. Let us know the name of the zip file.

When we have the zip file, we can accurately replicate your smart camera and take a closer look on our debuggers.

Hopefully, we can get you up and running quickly.

Regards,

Jack J.
Vision - Product Support Engineer
National Instruments

[Juurma]

Hi again,

it seems that it won't bee necessary as the 1742 started to work all of a sudden. Everything is okay again. Realy weird.

Well, let us hope it does not happen again. If you want some follow up info, please let me know.

Thank you all,

Märt

[Jack J.]

Hello Mart,

Good to know that the camera is working now. Did you happen to FTP to it and get all the files out before it started working? If so I would really like to take a look at those. We are hoping those files will help us understand how you got into that state to begin with.

Regards,

Jack J.

Vision Product Support Engineer

National Instruments