CVS emulator displays color bitmap images as black & white

[Rockhead]

I am running a VBAI2009 inspection on a 1454 CVS that uses a AVT Guppy F-036C color firewire camera. This system is on a production machine inspecting product we manufacture. VBAI uses the Legacy IMAQ for IEEE 1394 cameras on a CVS not the IMAQ-dx driver. The VBAI script contains several color based inspection steps. To get the AVT camera to display color I had to setup the camera files from MAX using the Bayer color tab because the Bayer settings are not accessible from the IMAQ driver on the CVS. I make no camera adjustments from VBAI. This setup works well and has been running for 6 months on the production machine without any issues.

Now I need to modify the VBAI script but cannot shut down the machine to make the changes and test the program. I captured bitmap images using MAX when the inspection was setup 6 months ago and stored them on my host computer for just such an occasion. I am trying to use these captured images and the CVS emulator in VBAI to make the changes to the program offline. I run the inspection under the CVS emulator and the acquisition step is setup to point to the captured bitmap images using the Configure Simulation Settings button. The problem I have is that the bitmaps are displayed as black & white in the emulator even though they are color images when viewed with Paint. I can't find any way to  correct this. Is this problem due to using the Bayer settings to create the color image or something else within the emulator? Is the emulator not setup for color image processing?

Any help would be appreciated,

Mark

[Brad · Accepted solution]

The camera acquisition steps save the video mode information used to acquire images. If you use these steps in emulation mode, it coerces the size and image type to match what was acquired so calibration and processing step use the same type of image. It sounds like the step thought the image was mono even though you got it to be color. I will look into how this could have been saved incorrectly when using Bayer settings. In the short term, you can disable the acquisition step (don't delete so you don't lose the camera settings saved in the step) and use a simulate acquisition step or a new 1394 acquisition step and this will not coerce the image size/type.

Hope this helps,

Brad 

[Rockhead]

Brad,

I will use the simulate acquisition step. If you do find anything as to why this happens please let me know. If you need anything from me to help resolve this I can post or send it to you.

Thanks for the help

Mark