National Instruments NI PCI-1426 Serial Interface

Chapter 2 Hardware Overview

Serial Interface

The NI 1426 provides serial connections 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 1426 supports the following baud rates: 56000, 38400, 19200,

9600, 7200, 4800, 3600, 2400, 2000, 1800, 1200, 600, and 300 bps.

You can use the serial interface interactively with MAX and

clsercon.exe, or programmatically with LabVIEW and C.

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.Go to <NI-IMAQ>\bin to access clsercon.exe.

Programmatically:

•LabVIEW—Use the serial interface programmatically, through calls

to the NI-IMAQ driver using the IMAQ Serial Write and IMAQ Serial

Read VIs. Go to <LabVIEW>\vi.lib\vision\driver\

imaqll.llb to access these files.

•C—Use the serial interface programmatically, through calls to the

NI-IMAQ driver using imgSessionSerialWrite and

imgSessionSerialRead.

Note IMAQ Serial Read, IMAQ Serial Write, clsercon.exe,

imgSessionSerialRead, and imgSessionSerialWrite are used for directly

accessing the NI 1426 serial port and are not required for most users.

National Instruments also fully supports the recommended serial API

described in the Specifications of the Camera Link Interface Standard for

Digital Cameras and Frame Grabbers manual. This manual is available on

several websites, including the Automated Image Association Web site at