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didnt Optimas work with the matrox boards? maybe one of us has an old dongle and the floppy disks... we could share? The trouble is finding a computer with a floppy disk drive (well it was the 3.5 not 5.25 disks at least).
S
Simon C. Watkins Ph.D, FRC Path
Professor and Vice Chair Cell Biology and Physiology
Professor Immunology
Director Center for Biologic Imaging
BSTS 225
University of Pittsburgh
3500 Terrace St
Pittsburgh PA 15261
412-352-2277
www.cbi.pitt.edu
________________________________________
From: Confocal Microscopy List [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Brideau [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2008 11:49 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Frame grabbing from a Matrox card
Search the CONFOCAL archive at http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?S1=confocal I have a colleague who used to work for Matrox. Here's what he had to say about your problem:
Ok, what he wants to do is possible and quite easy. However, a free
software package is not likely available. Matrox doesn't generally
let other people have access to their drivers and the info they'd need
to communicate with the grabber. Pretty well the only software out
there that can talk to a Matrox frame grabber is written using the
Matrox Imaging Library(MIL).
This means that MIL-Lite or ActiveMIL-Lite developers kit (depends on
if he wants to write the code in C++ or C# / VB) is his best, and only
choice. It isn't free, but as a university prof there might be an
educational discount. Don't quote me on that though I was never that
involved with the sales side of things. I think its something like
$500 US, or was about a year ago.
On the other hand if he's got the board working and has intellicam
then he's probably got a copy of MIL already. The board drivers are
not distributed separately from MIL. Unless he's got some third-party
software for it. In that case we're back to him needing a dev kit.
Please note that you can have only one (1) copy of MIL per boot
partition on a system.
Anyway, what he wants to do, grab images at specific times and
timestamp them is ridiculously simple in MIL. But he (or a student)
will have to write some code. There are three ways to do it,
depending on the desired accuracy of the timing and the length of the
intervals.
1. Use the Windows (or Linux if that's what he's got) Sleep system
call in his program to
put the program to sleep for n milliseconds, and whenever it wakes up
it calls the MdigGrab() function and grabs another image, then goes
back to sleep until it's time to do it again.
This method is the least accurate. The Matrox engineers always
reacted badly when someone used this method for that reason, but
generally those people were trying to time really short intervals.
2. Use the frame grabbers onboard timers to trigger the grab. The
program simply keeps calling MdigGrab() with a DCF that's setup to be
triggered by the timers, and the timers are
set (in the DCF, this is what intellicam is for) to send the trigger
at the desired interval.
This method is quite accurate, but the timers on the frame grabbers
have relatively short maximum durations. Most development, and most
demand has been for things that are faster, happening in even smaller
slices of a second and the timers reflect this.
3. Use an external clock source that sends a trigger pulse to the
board every interval. This is essentially the same as 2, but you're
not using the frame grabber's timers.
MIL/MIL-Lite have a drawing API which lets you annotate pictures.
This is often used to timestamp images.
I've included the contact info for both of Matrox's UK distributors below.
MVD Ltd
Unit 2 Station Approach
Wendover
Buckinghamshire
HP22 6BN
Telephone: + 44 (0) 845 603 8284
Fax: + 44 (0) 845 603 8285
E-mail: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Matrox Video and Imaging Technology Europe Limited
Chaplin House
Widewater Place
Moorhall Road
Harefield
Middlesex
United Kingdom UB9 6NS
Telephone: + 44 (0) 1895 827300
Fax: +44 (0)1895 827301
E-mail: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Hope this helped!
Craig
On Thu, Feb 21, 2008 at 6:25 AM, ugez323 <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
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http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?S1=confocal
Dear All
I have a camera set up on a PC and the card works fine via the intellicam
software supplied with the drivers. I am now at a point where I need to
frame grab at preset intervals over say 2 hours (maybe one frame every 2
minutes (with a timestamp would be perfect!)). I am looking for a free
package that may do this. Does anyone have anything to hand or know of a
package that would do this? I have looked at the obvious such as ImageJ but
I am can't find a plug-in for this board type.
Any help appreciated!
Jonathan
Professor J.C. Knowles BSc(hons), PhD, FIMMM, CEng, FRSC, CSci
Professor of Biomaterials Science
Head of Division of Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering,
UCL Eastman Dental Institute,
University College London,
256 Gray's Inn Road,
London WC1X 8LD. UK.
Tel +44 (0)207 915 1189
Fax +44 (0)207 915 1227
Mobile 07785 313615
Skype Me
Editor, Journal of Biomaterials Applications
Email [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Eastman website; http://www.eastman.ucl.ac.uk
Personal website; http://www.eastman.ucl.ac.uk/~jknowles<http://www.eastman.ucl.ac.uk/%7Ejknowles>
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