Controlling a USB camera in Igor Pro 8

Hi,

First what operating system are you on?

Make sure camera is plugged in before launching IP8.

When you run:

what does IP8 return as a string?  For example on my Mac laptop I get " FaceTime HD Camera".

Andy

Hi Andy,

I am on Windows 7 64 bits.

I made sure the camera is plugged in before launching IP8. I can actually open a video window of the camera in IP8.
The issue is that I cannot change the settings of the camera, such as the gain, the exposure time, etc., like I could do with DSXOP.

When I run "GetCamera availablecameras", I get "StUSBCam".

Hope it helps...

Hi,

Ok IP8 sees that a camera is available and there is only one.

When you issue the command

The expected behavior should be in a few seconds a new window will open with the name camera0.

What happens?  If no window pops up is there an error message?

Andy

When I issue the command "NewCamera", a new window does open with the name camera0.
This is not the issue.

My problem deals with the adjustment of the settings of the camera (gain, exposure time, etc.), which I do not have access to, unlike I did with the DSXOP in IP6.

Thanks for your help.

I believe that ModifyCamera is the only way to change these settings.

Some cameras do not have access to the settings via USB.  I had to have custom driver written for a project of mine to control a Baesler camera even though it showed up via the USB driver.  I just did have access to the settings.

Andy

Both of the posts above are correct.  The only way to control the settings of the camera is via ModifyCamera.  You are out of luck if it turns out that your camera driver does not support the particular protocol that Qt uses. 

Since you are working on Windows and you have access to IP6 you may want to keep the old Direct Show XOP around just for image acquisition.  It is simpler than having an XOP written and if you care careful, you should be able to move experiments between the two versions of Igor.

A.G.