Troubleshooting NI Vision Guide

This guide is to help you get started with troubleshooting Vision cameras and frame grabbers, explaining common troubleshooting steps and questions from installing the software to using it with different hardware. There are several issue areas/topics that are linked out to other knowledge articles for general steps, questions, and some specific situations and solutions.

This guide links to six other main pages associated with a specific Vision topic or hardware. In each of these, you will find additional information to assist you in the troubleshooting process. To help you identify where the issue may be occurring, this guide first provides a series of questions our NI Vision engineers would ask. Use the answers to choose the best corresponding link.

Before starting to investigate please verify what NI Vision software do you need for your application:

• Vision Development Module (VDM)
  • Image processing API Libraries for LabVIEW and Text-Based languages
• Vision Acquisition Software (VAS)
  • Drivers for Image acquisition and interface for camera buses
• Vision Builder for Automated Inspection (VBAI) 
  • Application software for Automated Vision application (no programming)

Important Note: This guide does not cover every possibility of the issues that may occur. Therefore, it should be used as a starting point and exploring the terminology to further search for solutions if they are not found.
 

Initial Troubleshooting Questions

To be efficient in the troubleshooting process, go through the following questions and note details of your issue and the context in a list:

• What hardware is being used?
• What version of software/drivers are installed and used?
• What operating system is being used?
• Are there other non-NI drivers or software communicating (interfering) with the same NI hardware?
• Getting a MAX Technical Support Report
  • Note: This is used by Technical Support and is a more formalized display of the first 3 bullet points and should only be obtained as necessary or when instructed.
• How is the hardware connected? (bus/cable and accessories)
• Is there an error returned? If yes, note the number or take a screen capture
• Where and when does the problem appear?
• Is the environment noisy?

 

Troubleshooting NI Vision Guides:

Look to the following links for the topic area most similar to the issue. Follow the most appropriate link for more information and tools to help assist your troubleshooting of the problem. 

• Troubleshoot NI Vision: Software Installation
• Hardware Communication and Bus Detection
  • Confirm the camera is supported by NI, see below for specific camera bus guides:
    • Troubleshoot NI Vision: Hardware - GigE Vision
    • Troubleshoot NI Vision: Hardware - USB3 Vision
    • Troubleshoot NI Vision: Hardware - USB 2.0
    • Troubleshoot NI Vision: Hardware - CameraLink
    • Archived: Troubleshoot NI Vision: Hardware - FireWire®
• Troubleshoot NI Vision: Bug Fixes and Known Issues

Next Steps

Moving forwards, please make use of the online help, training courses, and knowledgebase.

• Vision training courses
• NI Vision Concepts online help, NI Vision Assistant Help, NI Vision Builder for Automated Inspection: Configuration Help, or offline inside each installed software (help menu), to know more about specific VIs like Machine Vision VI functions
• Or use our NI web support Knowledge Base resources links. Here some common examples to search:
  • How can I programmatically Get and Set Attributes with NI-IMAQdx
  • How Do I Convert a Color Image to Grayscale?