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What Cameras are Supported by the NI-IMAQ for USB Cameras Driver?

Primary Software: Driver Software>>NI-IMAQ for USB Cameras
Primary Software Version: 1.0
Primary Software Fixed Version: N/A
Secondary Software: N/A

Problem:
What cameras are supported by the NI-IMAQ for USB Cameras driver?

Solution:
The NI-IMAQ for USB Cameras driver supports any camera with a DirectShow filter. This typically includes any USB camera, microscope, scanner, etc, most IEEE-1394 cameras, and even USB video adapters which take analog video and convert it to USB. This driver is not meant for high-end vision applications because the cameras that have DirectShow filters are typically consumer grade, low resolution cameras. Industrial IEEE-1394 cameras with DirectShow filters typically don't provide as many available resolutions and frame rates with the DirectShow filter as the IEEE-1394 interface provides under the IIDC/DCAM standard (National Instruments provides the NI-IMAQdx driver for interfacing with IIDC/DCAM-compliant IEEE-1394 cameras).

The DirectShow driver is geared towards academic applications and users who want to acquire images but don't require them to be high quality. A camera's DirectShow filter typically compresses images and often adds compression artifacts to the image which make image processing difficult.

The NI-IMAQ for USB Cameras driver does not support grabbing from more than one camera simultaneously. It is also recommended to use the driver with single processor, non-hyper-threaded machines. If you do have a dual processor or hyper-threaded machine, you can disable these features to allow for better USB acquisition performance with this driver. This is often done through the BIOS.

Related Links:
Developer Zone Example: NI-IMAQ for USB Cameras Driver
KnowledgeBase 410AQ7S4: Can I Acquire from Two USB Cameras Simultaneously with NI-IMAQ for USB Cameras 1.0?

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Report Date: 01/19/2005
Last Updated: 09/23/2008
Document ID: 3HI7698M

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