USB imaging devices with the IMAQdx driver

[benzaage]

Hi all,

I´m now having trouble for some days and hope anybody can help. My hardware:

• PC running windows 10 professional
• XIMEA USB3.1 PCIe extension
• LabVIEW 2017; VAS 17.5
• 3x The Imaging Source DMK33UX250 (USB3 Vision compatible)

My Problem:

Even after setting the driver of all cameras to the IMAQdx driver, the cameras are not listed under the IMAQdx folder in MAX. The folder doesn´t even show up... Instead they are listed with a grey camera symbol which I guess says that it is used via directshow interface. Based on this there is a problem with the Videomodes dropdown menue where only some of the possible video modes (all RGB modes although the camera is monochrom) are listed.

Furthermore in some cases only two of the cameras are shown. The third one is shown next to a USB symbol and not accessible due to "camera already in use". I guess this is a duplicate of one of my other cameras...

I´ve read thorugh the forums and tried a reinstall of LabVIEW, removed the original manufacturers drivers and so on.

Has anybody have had a similar problem or an idea what else I can do?

Thanks in advance for any comment!

Ben

[BlueCheese]

To use them with IMAQdx you need to associate them with the NI-IMAQdx driver first (instead of the vendor driver). You may be able to right click on the cameras in MAX and select the driver, but if not, you should be able to via device manager. IMAQdx should show up as one of the compatible drivers for the device if it is implementing the USB3 Vision standard.

[benzaage]

Thanks for your reply.

I´ve associated each camera with the IMAQdx driver. When I open one of the cameras and switch to the camera attributes tab, the property "Bus type" says DirectShow. I´m not sure if this is correct because I thougth you can either use DirectShow or IMAQdx to use the cameras. As I read in another thread the directshow implementation causes an incomplete listing of the available videomodes which are all RGB although the camera is monochrome. For instance if I use the vendors software it gives me ~20 different video modes but MAX only offers 5.

Ben

[BlueCheese]

If you have IMAQdx bound to the device, then DirectShow should not be available since IMAQdx doesn't expose that interface. If the IMAQdx device you are opening still says DirectShow, then you are not going through the NI driver.

I'm not that familiar with that particular camera, but it is possible that it exposes two interfaces, one for UVC or even a vendor driver, and another for USB3 Vision (I've seen some that do this). It would be a multi-function USB device in this case.

It may help to show some screenshots of device manager and MAX and the behavior you are seeing.

[benzaage]

I think I´ve come a little bit further on this topic. Today I had one situation where only one cam was plugged into the PC and everything was as expected. In MAX the cam was once displayed as DirectShow device and once as USB3 IMAQdx device. Even each property and video mode was available there. When I was then plugging another cam into the PC nothing was working anymore. I received an error

0xBFF6903E "There was an error from the control interface of the USB3 Vision camera"

After a lot of driver reinstallations and unsuccessful actions I navigated to the IMAQdx data folder where the camera .icd files are located. I found out that if I connect each camera seperately to the PC everythings works fine when I delete the icd files and xml files before plugging the next cam in (see screenshot of MAX for one cam working). Later on it turned out that when using the USB3 interface IMAQdx reads the serial number 0xD for each cam even though they are physically different cameras (but of the same type) with different serial numbers. I´ve attached a screenshot showing the content of the data folder for each cam. In the icd file name you can see that there is always the serial number 0xD written.

I guess that the IMAQdx sees three cams with the same serial number when all are connected to the pc at the same time end then quits work. This may explai why only one cam is displayed both DirectShow and USB3 and the others are only displayed as DirectShow when all are connected.

The problem is I don´t have any idea how to deal with this. When using the DirectShow Interface I can see different serial numbers for each cam.

Since the EnumerateCameras.vi of the IMAQdx palette also displays only one USB3 cam and three DirectShow cameras this cannot be a MAX only issue. It looks more like a IMAQdx issue.

[BlueCheese]

Hi,

I can't speak for the exact behavior of how IMAQdx behaves when two cameras with the same serial number are plugged in, but I wouldn't be surprised about any odd behavior seen. IMAQdx expects (and the USB3 Vision standard has it as a mandatory requirement) that the cameras return unique serial numbers.

As for why the DirectShow devices all show different serial numbers, that is easy to explain. IMAQdx returns a generated pseudo-serial number for DirectShow devices based on the system-provided "path" to the device (based on things like which USB port it is on). This is because most USB webcams supported by DirectShow don't have serial numbers programmed in (reduced costs) and thus Windows uses path information to uniquely identify them instead.

I think the only way to resolve this would be to talk with the camera vendor and see if they can figure out why all your cameras have a broken serial number programmed in.

Eric

[benzaage]

Thanks again for your reply!

I´m already in contact with the vendor and he told me to contact NI since MAX and IMAQdx are maybe responsible 😞

I did so an contacted the NI support. Hopefully they have an idea on this.

We unfortunately have six of these cameras here which are meant to be integrated in two machines soon. I´m afraid we have to go to another manufacturer... Maybe basler.

I´ll post any news on this topic here...

Ben