VisionDevModule & IMAQ 1394 : Code works fine but Problem with built application & other strange problems

[MKris]

Hi,

I am working with the following :

1. LabVIEW 7.0

2. VDM 7.0

3. IMAQ1394 - 1.5.2

4. NI DAQ mx 7.5

5. OS Win 2K with SP 4

Its a single color camera system, with an USB 6501 for DIO. The code works perfectly, but when I build the application really  strange things happen. Like sometimes, the application works; some times it freezes. Other times it says, "msxsport.dll not found in the following search paths ...".. Some times it plain generates an error ("this application has generated an error ") & quits.

I have couple of queries:

1. I have worked for a long time on IMAQ 1394, but this is the first time this is happening... Is is because of some issues with DAQ mx 7.5 ?

2. With windows XP Pro, the system kept rebooting... after the application was built once & run. Again the code worked okay every time...

3.With multiple camera systems, sometimes the cameras cannot be found.. Is this issue been addressed in the latest release i.e. 8.0 ? Will upgrading to 8.0 solve my (various) problems

4. Almost always after a period , NI MAX gets corrupted.(though not in this specific case)

Many thanks for replying to this post...

MK

[s_a_s]

This sounds like very strange behavior indeed.  I have build many applications with the software you mentioned and haven't had any problems with it.  It's possible that there is a problem with the driver installation, but we'll have to test that.

Upgrading is always an option, and you can try it for free if you would like.  You can download an evaluation copy of LabVIEW and VDM 8.0 to see if it fixes the problem.  Another thing you can do is to try building an application that does not make use of one of the drivers (ie one with just DAQ, and one with IMAQ).  If either of these run with a similar error, we can safely say we have narrowed down the problem and can take steps with either an upgrade or simply a reinstall. 

To address the issue about the cameras not appearing.  Sometimes Windows has problems recognizing IEEE 1394 devices on boot up.  A good way to see if it is a windows problem is to check to see if the camera is visible in the windows device manager applet when it does not appear in MAX.  If that is the case, it is probably a windows problem.  Does refreshing MAX cause the camera to re-appear when it is missing?

MAX getting corrupted isn't unheard of, but it is not a common occurance.  I would tend to look at other problems with the system that would be causing this.  Upgrading to LabVIEW 8 will install the latest version of MAX that may get around some of the problems you are having with corruption.

[MKris]

Hi Arves,

First of all thanks for your response.

1. I have tried rebuilding the application with out calling any DAQ functions & the application is now working fine. But still Im stuck with the specific hardware (i.e. the USB DIO) & all of signal conditioning would have to be changed. Is there any way out ( the USB DIO does not work with earlier DAQ versions) ?

2. re. the cameras disappearing, I had raised this question around a year back. Then the reply was to use Service Pack 4 (for Win 2K Professional), & the problem did get resolved, though I had to run the cameras at lesser than allowed for bandwidth i.e at 640x480 I could run three cameras only @ 15 fps each. Later I wanted to increase through put, so I put 3 Fire Wire cards in the PC , dedicated for one camera & ran the cameras at full speed. The application worked very well for around 4 months. Suddenly one day, Max got corrupted. After that we repaired Max , but the problem kept appearing. After this we reinstalled the OS, with the Service Pack & then the application, but the problem kept reappearing - suddenly the application would quit with an error. On restarting , it would report " camera not found". Surprisingly, the timing of the error was indeterminate, i.e. the applicaiton would sometimes run for 2/3 days before quitting; other times it would show the error in may be 15 minutes. In these cases refreshing by Max would still not find the camera; variety of things would need to be tried, i.e. removing the firewire cable & reinserting would sometimes resolve the issue.Further, windows device manager would always show all three cameras. (for your reference the Software configuration is the same , as put in my earlier post & the cameras are Basler 601f monochrome ).Also we monitored the memory usage to see if there are any memory leaks - but the usage remained constant. Also the code was rechecked to see bad memory usage but yielded no results.

Further in extreme cases, we had to delete the cameras from the Windows Device Manager & Reboot the system, & go through the process of reassigning the drivers etc. to the cameras.

The main thing is the error shows up unexpectedly as mentioned above, i.e even if all 3 cameras are found at boot up & the application starts without a hitch, it may after a Variable amount of time quit with an error i.e. the camera(its always one camera) gets "Kicked Out" during the running of the application....

Once again many thanks in advance for replying to this post.

Rgds,

MK

[Lorne H.]

Mk,

The dissappearing firewire camera might not be the fault of the NI-IMAQ for IEEE 1394 driver, but rather a problem with IEEE 1394 bus drivers.  This would explain why in Windows 2000 the fix for your problem was to install a newer service pack instead of a newer NI-IMAQ for IEEE 1394 driver.

Your previous posting was dealing with many issues.  I am going to concentrate on this one issue.  I have been unable to find a solution to your problem on my end.  Do you cameras come with their own software for grabbing images?  You might try using the camera manufacturers software and see if the same problem occurs.

Lorne Hengst
Application Engineer
National Instruments

[chatonda]

Lorne,

The problem of firewire camera not being recognized is very common. I have an application that

uses 18 cameras simultaneously. Invariably, one or two RT targets are fail to detect the camera

at boot. I have raised this problem with NI customer support but none of the suggestions made

has worked. As a matter of fact, I resurrected the issue about a month ago but there has been no

response.

What I do to recover from the condition is to reboot the RT device. That adds tons of time to my

setup time, and I don't like it. Disconnecting and then reconnecting the firewire cable (power

cycling the camera) also works. But this is not feasible in a production environment.

There was a thread from about 2 years ago in which somebody faced with the same problem

suggested resetting the firewire interface using some low-level instructions. I had one of my

colleagues try it out, but it did not work.

The LabVIEW error code for this problem is -1074364389.

Thanks,

Chatonda Mtika

Algis Corp.

[JohannS]

Dear MK

There is a known issue with NI-IMAQ for IEEE 1394 Cameras 1.5.x which resulted in multiple cameras not showing up when booting up. The fix was to unplug and plug the cameras back in. That usually solved the problem, until you had to reboot again.

This issues was fixed in NI-IMAQ for IEEE 1394 Cameras 2.0.x. The boot process was optimized as not to "lose" cameras. If you have not upgraded your software yet, I would strongly recommend that you upgrade your software to NI-IMAQ for IEEE 1394 Cameras 2.0.2 which is available as part of NI Vision Acquisition 8.0.

Regards,

Johann

[chatonda]

Johann, I've been using 2.0.1 for a while now. In fact, I was given the beta version of 2.0 specifically for this problem. But it never went away. I have plans to upgrade to LabVIEW+Vision 8.0 over the next few months. But I'm not sure migrating to 8.0 (with ver 2.0.2 of 1394 driver) will solve this problem. I guess what might be helpful to me is if I knew exactly what causes this problem. Then I might try to devise some ways of avoiding it. Thanks, Chatonda Mtika Chief Scientist Algis Corp