NI-IMAQdx for Vision Assistant

[Tom Bottiglieri]

In the past we were able to use the "Acquire Images" from an IP cam feature in Vision Assistant, but with the 2011 version, it is asking for a NI-IMAQdx driver/license. Do we have access to that through FRC? It's not make or break, but using Vision assistant to live tune the camera parameters was helpful in the past.

[michael714]

We're having the same problem. We can process an image grabbed from the Axis Cam, but we can't process the realtime stream from the Axis Cam using Vision Assistant. We get the same prompt about installing NI-IMAQdx.

Can we now only work with grabbed images?

[Greg McKaskle]

Are you selecting the Axis IP camera from the list? There are technically two ways to communicate to the Axis cameras -- IMAQdx and a custom plug-in made from the WPI camera VIs. If the Axis IP isn't present, that must mean that some portion of the install SW has one plug-in and not the custom one.

Please report back with the acquire options that are enabled.

Greg McKaskle

[Tom Bottiglieri]

Originally Posted by Greg McKaskle

Are you selecting the Axis IP camera from the list? There are technically two ways to communicate to the Axis cameras -- IMAQdx and a custom plug-in made from the WPI camera VIs. If the Axis IP isn't present, that must mean that some portion of the install SW has one plug-in and not the custom one.

Please report back with the acquire options that are enabled.

Greg McKaskle

I installed the labview updates and that seemed to fix it.

[michael714]

The LabView updates did not fix it for us. We finally realized that we had to install the LabView update, the utilities update and the driver station update. But even after we installed those things, we were not able to use NI Vision Assistant on realtime images.

To clarify, we are not connected to the cRio. We merely have the Axis Cam hooked to the PC running the NI Vision Assistant. We are also not using LabView. Can you use VI's with NI Vision Assistant?

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

[Greg McKaskle]

If the plug-in is installed, the bottom camera option for acquiring images should be Axis specific and not reliant on IMAQdx. It is below the Simulate Acquisition option.

The Axis IP will allow you to grab single images and the run/play arrow will display a sequence of images. It has a button to capture a sequence of images, but honestly I rarely use it.

Can you give more details on what works and what doesn't?

Greg McKaskle

[michael714]

Hi Greg,
Thanks for your responses.

Right now we have the following to options available at the bottom of the list when we choose to acquire images:

Simulate Acquisition

and then

Acquire Image from Axis Cam IP (at the very bottom of the list)

So, we used the Acquire Image from Axis Cam IP to grab individual frames and that worked fine. We were thinking that we could use the NI Vision Assistant to process the stream of images from the Axis Cam. Is that true?

Thanks again.

[Greg McKaskle]

That is not something Vision Assistant does. It is more an investigatory tool, and isn't really an analysis tool on its own. There is a tool called Vision Builder AI, or something like that which lets you embed state machines and comparison logic, and I suspect it includes what you are asking about.

I typically get the VI to work on a handful of images, code it in a LV VI that uses the camera, and displays all sorts of intermediate processing results. Then I run it live, testing other angles, lighting, blue, etc. looking for failures in the processing. I can sometimes tune it there, and other times, I capture the failure images, add them to the test stack, and go back to Vision Assistant to explore.

Greg McKaksle