Chapter 2
Hardware Overview
©
National Instruments Corporation
2-7
NI PCIe-1433 User Manual and Specifications
Serial Interface
The NI 1433 provides serial communication to and from the camera
through two LVDS pairs in the Camera Link cable. All Camera Link serial
communication uses one start bit, one stop bit, no parity, and no hardware
handshaking.
The NI 1433 supports all baud rates specified by the Camera Link
specification. Refer to the
section of Appendix A,
, for a list of baud rates the NI 1433 supports.
You can use the serial interface interactively with MAX,
clsercon.exe
,
or a manufacturer supplied camera control utility, or programmatically with
LabVIEW, C, or .NET.
Interactively:
•
MAX
—Use MAX with a camera file containing preprogrammed
commands. When an acquisition is initiated, the commands are sent to
the camera.
•
clsercon.exe
—Use the National Instruments terminal emulator for
Camera Link,
clsercon.exe
, if a camera file with preprogrammed serial
commands does not exist for your camera. With
clsercon.exe
, you can
still communicate serially with your camera. Access
clsercon.exe
from the
<NI-IMAQ>\bin
directory, where
<NI-IMAQ>
is the location
NI-IMAQ is installed.
•
Manufacturer Supplied Camera Control Utility
—Camera
manufacturers who are compliant with the Camera Link 1.1 or later
specification provide a camera control utility which sends the
appropriate serial commands for configuring your camera through the
NI 1433 serial port.
Programmatically:
•
LabVIEW
—Use the serial interface programmatically, through calls
to the NI-IMAQ driver using the IMAQ Serial Write VI and IMAQ
Serial Read VI.
•
C
—Use the serial interface programmatically, through calls to the
NI-IMAQ driver using the
imgSessionSerialWrite
and
imgSessionSerialRead
functions.
•
.NET
—Use the serial interface programmatically, through calls to the
NI-IMAQ driver using the
ImaqSerialConnection
class.
Note
clsercon.exe
and all programmatic connection methods provide direct manual
access of the NI 1433 serial port, and are not required for most users.
