Synchronized image acquisition with PCIe-8233 NI Frame Grabber using IMAQdx & LabVIEW

[Siva_96]

Hello,

I am trying to acquire synchronized images with four Basler ace acA2440-20gm along with PCIe-8233 frame grabber. I tried opening the camera and configuring the grab acquisition with single image buffer for camera and then try to grab the images for all four cameras. But the frames that I save from these cameras are not in sync. I tried initializing them in same sequence and then capture them in in a while loop with same sequence, its not working, Then i tried grab in different while loop for four cameras then I tried running them in same time. Some times they are in sync but not all the times. I tried it with software trigger but they are not in sync always. So i tried running then in sync with out software trigger in timed loop as well but they are not in sync.  And I also found that the frame rate from the camera is not constantly same they differ and Its hard to keep the same buffer number as well.

Thanks in advance,

Siva

 

[BlueCheese]

The PCIe-8233 doesn’t support any synchronization between cameras directly. It is simply a network card with Power Over Ethernet.

Some options for synchronizing images between multiple cameras:

-Use a PCIe-8237R. This board can send hardware timed trigger packets over the Ethernet port to the cameras. You can expand this synchronization over more than one board using a RTSI cable.

-Use an NI embedded system like the IC-3173, which has the same functionality as the 8237R card above, as well as additional options with IEEE-1588 to synchronize the cameras to each other and the CPU.

-Continue using your 8233 but use physical trigger signals between your cameras,

such as having the frame exposure of one camera trigger the others.

-Connect all the cameras to a switch and have the cameras synchronize to each other via IEEE-1588, and then enable some of the synchronized trigger modes those cameras support. This would require sharing bandwidth between the cameras (unless you used a faster speed port between the switch and PC) and also may have reduced synchronization performance if the switch doesn’t have hardware 1588 support.

[Siva_96]

Thanks for your reply. 

But the image captured is almost in sync but not all the times. In terms of software alone, is it possible to sync without the use of hardware triggering? I also wonder how we capture the acquired time of images rather than saving them in order to evaluate the system performance. 

Siva