DCAM IEEE 1394 (FireWire) Hardware on Windows

Troubleshooting DCAM IEEE 1394 Hardware on Windows

If you are having trouble using the Image Acquisition Toolbox™ software with an IEEE^® 1394 (FireWire) camera using the toolbox's dcam adaptor, try the following:

Install the Image Acquisition Toolbox Support Package for DCAM Hardware.
Starting with version R2014a, each adaptor is available separately through MATLAB^® Add-Ons. See Image Acquisition Support Packages for Hardware Adaptors for information about installing the adaptors.
When installing the CMU 1394 Digital Camera Driver Setup, on the first page of the installation wizard, under Select components to install, select these three items in the installation list, and click Next.
- Program Group and Desktop Shortcuts
- Disable Default Windows Driver
- Update Driver for Attached Devices
Verify that your IEEE 1394 (FireWire) camera is plugged into the IEEE 1394 (FireWire) port on your computer and is powered up.
Confirm that another imaging application is not connected to the camera.
Confirm that the camera is detected by "1394Camera Demo 64-bit" installed with the CMU DCAM driver. See Running the CMU Camera Demo Application on Windows.
Verify that your IEEE 1394 (FireWire) camera can be accessed through the dcam adaptor.
- Make sure the camera is compliant with the IIDC 1394-based Digital Camera (DCAM) specification. Vendors typically include this information in documentation that comes with the camera. If your digital camera is not DCAM compliant, you might be able to use the winvideo adaptor. See Windows Video Hardware for information.
- Make sure the camera outputs data in uncompressed format. Cameras that output data in Digital Video (DV) format, such as digital camcorders, cannot use the dcam adaptor. To access these devices, use the winvideo adaptor. See Windows Video Hardware for information.
- Make sure you specified the dcam adaptor when you created the video input object. Some IEEE 1394 (FireWire) cameras can be accessed through either the dcam or winvideo adaptors. If you can connect to your camera from the toolbox but cannot access some camera features, such as hardware triggering, you might be accessing the camera through a DirectX^® driver. See Creating a Video Input Object for more information about specifying adaptors.
- If the demo application does not recognize the camera, install the CMU DCAM driver. See Manually Installing the CMU DCAM Driver on Windows for instructions.
Verify that your CMU 1394 Digital Camera driver is version 6.4.6. The "CMU 1394 Digital Camera Driver" installed version can be found from Windows Control Panel > Programs > Programs and Features.
Confirm that the IEEE 1394 (FireWire) card is detected and drivers are correctly installed in Windows Device Manager.

Manually Installing the CMU DCAM Driver on Windows

The Image Acquisition Toolbox software supports acquiring data from IEEE 1394 (FireWire) cameras that support the IIDC 1394-based Digital Camera (DCAM) specification. To use a DCAM-compliant camera, you must use the DCAM driver created by Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) to connect to these devices.

Note

The CMU DCAM driver is the only DCAM driver supported by the toolbox. You cannot use vendor-supplied drivers, even if they are compliant with the DCAM specification.

Installing the Driver

To install the CMU DCAM driver on your system, follow this procedure:

Obtain the CMU DCAM driver files. The Image Acquisition Toolbox software includes the CMU DCAM installation file, 1394camera646.exe, in the directory
```
matlabroot\toolbox\imaq\imaqextern\drivers\win64\dcam 
```
where matlabroot represents the name of your MATLAB installation directory.
You can also download the DCAM driver directly from CMU. Go to the website www.cs.cmu.edu/~iwan/1394 and click the download link.
Start the installation by double-clicking the .exe file.
On the first page of the installation wizard under Select components to install, select these three items in the installation list and click Next.
- Program Group and Desktop Shortcuts
- Disable Default Windows Driver
- Update Driver for Attached Devices
On the second page of the wizard, accept the default location or browse to a new one, and click Install.

Note

You may need to have your camera recognized after installing the driver. If this happens, open Device Manager and select the camera software. Right-click it, and choose Update Driver Software. Browse for the vendor driver software, and install it.

Running the CMU Camera Demo Application on Windows

The Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) DCAM driver distribution includes a camera demo application, named 1394CameraDemo.exe. The demo application is among the files you installed in the previous section.

You can use this demo application to verify whether your camera is using the CMU DCAM driver. To access a camera through this demo application:

Select Start > Programs > CMU 1394 Camera > 1394 Camera Demo.
The application opens a window, shown in the following figure.
From the Camera Demo application, select Camera > Check Link. This option causes the demo application to look for DCAM-compatible cameras that are available through the IEEE 1394 (FireWire) connection.
The demo application displays the results of this search in a pop-up message box. In the following example, the demo application found a camera. Click OK to continue.
Select Camera > Select Camera, and select the camera you want to use. The Select Camera option is not enabled until after the Check Link option has successfully found cameras.
Select Camera > Init Camera. In this step, the demo application checks the values of various camera properties. The demo application might resize itself to fit the video format of the specified camera. If you see the following dialog box message, click Yes.
Select Camera > Show Camera to start acquiring video.
The demo application starts displaying live video in the window.
To exit, select Stop Camera from the Camera menu, and click Exit.