How to Invert "Acquisition in Progress" - Signal (Pike F421B)

[Wally_de]

Hello everybody,

I am currently workin on a camshaft inspection machine using the Pike F421B. Before I was using the software AVT Smartview. Now my company wants to change to LabVIEW since we developed our own analysis program. During the process of image acquisition the camera outputs a "busy"-signal. My question is: Is it possible to somehow invert this signal. I was able to invert it in AVT Smartview but I can't seem to find the settings in LabVIEW. This signal is used to sequentially trigger LEDs so that the lighting and image acquisition is synchronized. The problem is the LED controller reacts to the falling edge of a trigger. That's why I need to somehow invert this signal without external wiring. I am currently using the "vision acquisition" VI. I would appreciate any solution. (Please also see picture).

Thank you.

[BlueCheese · Accepted solution]

I assume you mean the camera is outputting this signal via an I/O line, correct? You would likely need to use some register accesses to configure this. If you check the manual for your device it should list the registers you would need to configure and then you could use the IMAQdx Read/Write register VIs to access them.

Another option would be to use AVT's software and save the default settings of that I/O signal to be inverted into the camera's power-on defaults. Since this is an extended setting not touched by IMAQdx by default, it should retain this setting loaded even after IMAQdx overrides the settings with what you have saved from the express VI or MAX software.

Eric

[Wally_de]

Thank you for the reply Eric.

correct, the camera outputs the signal through an I/O line.

I tried your second suggestion. The problem I encountered was that when AVT Smartview was installed LabVIEW didn't recognize the camera. When I had the LabVIEW driver installed, Smartview didn't recognize the camera and said that the wrong driver was installed. I assume the different drivers are not compatible with the softwares. But I will try to look up the mentioned register. Hopefully I can find it. I already contacted the support team of alled vision (manufacturer of the camera). They couldn't really help me concerning camera settings in LabVIEW and referred me to this forum.

[Wally_de]

Thank you for the suggestion. I looked up the register, used the IMAQdx Read/Write VI and got an inverted signal.