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National Instruments Corporation
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Introduction
This chapter describes the NI PXI/PCI-1409 (NI 1409) device and your
software programming choices.
About the NI 1409
The NI 1409 is a high-accuracy, monochrome image acquisition device for
PXI, PCI, or CompactPCI chassis that support RS-170, CCIR, NTSC, and
PAL video standards, as well as some nonstandard cameras from any of
four input sources. The NI 1409 features a 10-bit analog-to-digital
converter (ADC) that converts video signals to digital formats. The
NI 1409 device acquires images in real time and stores them in onboard
frame memory or transfers them directly to system memory.
The NI 1409 is easy to install and configure. The NI 1409 ships with
NI Vision Acquisition Software, which includes NI-IMAQ, the National
Instruments driver software you can use to directly control the NI 1409 and
other National Instruments image acquisition devices. With NI-IMAQ, you
can quickly and easily start your applications without having to program
the device at the register level.
As a standalone device, the NI 1409 supports four general-purpose control
lines that are configurable to generate precise timing signals for controlling
camera acquisition. The NI 1409 also supports four video sources and
four external I/O lines to use as triggers or digital I/O lines.
Easily synchronizing several functions to a common trigger or timing event
is a common challenge with image acquisition devices. The NI 1409 uses
its Real-Time System Integration (RTSI) bus to solve this problem. The
RTSI bus uses the National Instruments RTSI bus interface and ribbon
cable to route additional timing and trigger signals between the NI 1409
and up to four National Instruments data acquisition (DAQ), Motion
Control, or image acquisition devices. The RTSI bus can even synchronize
multiple image acquisition device hardware captures.
For detailed NI 1409 specifications, refer to
Getting Started with the
NI PXI/PCI-1409
.