Photron APX camera, remote control

[pchitnis]

Is there a way to control a Photron APX camera using Labview?  I would like to arm acquisition, wait for acqisition to finish, then write images to file on the PC.

[Andy_C.]

Hello pchitnis,

What sort of bus does Photron APX have? Analog/Cameral Link/USB/IEEE/GigE? This particular camera is not officially supported by NI (see link below for list of cameras supported) However, if the manufacture of the camera would provide the camera file, it should be able to interface with LabVIEW and our framegrabbers.

[Andy_C.]

Industrial Camra Advisor

http://sine.ni.com/apps/utf8/nipc.specs?action=search&asid=1102

[pchitnis]

Andy,

Thanks for the response.  The camera has a firewire interface.

[Andy_C.]

Hello pchitnis,

Here's the page to our firewire framebrabbers

IEEE1394 and GigE Vision

http://sine.ni.com/nips/cds/view/p/lang/en/nid/201714

Hopefully this can help you out

[BruceAmmons]

I took a quick look at the camera details on the Photron web site.  It looks like this is a high speed camera that stores the images internally, then transfers the images to a PC after acquisition.

I strongly doubt the standard firewire or GigE interfaces are going to work in this case.  They mostly work with cameras that stream images continuously as they are captured.

I would contact the manufacturer or distributor and ask what options there are for control of the camera from an external PC.

Bruce

[AdamLR]

I'm running into the same problem. I have come up with the following solution to fix it. Use the analog video out on the APX camera body to an analog vision card.  You can trigger the camera by wiring a BNC cable to a counteroutput and usingf a 10ms pulse to the TRIGGER_IN cable on the "General In"

[GretchenSkellyZimmer]

Has anyone developed subVIs using 'Call Library Function Node' to interface with a Photron APX camera?

We have an Ultima APX II, and are currently controlling (ie, setting parameters, turning on intensifier, etc) via the vendor software PFV.

But would like to control the camera via Labview.  The vendor has supplied us with an SDK containing source code and dlls for both VB & C++, but no longer supports APX II so is not willing to supply use with a sample Labview interface.  They claim they are currently developing a Labview package for APX III cameras.  I have looked into developing 'wrappers', but the C++ contains structures & classes, so it would be quite a challenge.  In addition, their pdf documents in the SDK has no reference to API routines.

Looking for insights and / or sample code,

regards, Gretchen