NI-vision Tutorial

Introduction to Vision Systems in LabVIEW :

             In this tutorial we will introduce the concepts of   machine vision and how we  can implement applications in LabVIEW.

Following softwares are necessary as per our need (1st three are ver necessary 3rd is optional)

             1. LabVIEW
             2. NIVisionAcquisitionSoftware
             3. NIVisionDevelopmentModule
             4. NIVisionBuilderforAutomatedInspection 

The software packages are explained in another post of  here only try to find it in posts..

1. Machine vision:
   1.1           Machine vision(MV) is the process of applying a range of technologies to provide imaging‐based automatic inspection,
process control and robot guidance in industrial applications.
A generally accepted definition machine vision is “the analysis of images to extract data for controlling a process or activity”.
              The primary uses for machine vision are automatic inspection and robot guidance.The main categories in to which MV applications fall are quality assurance,sorting,material handling,robot guidance and calibration,etc.
  
1.2             After the image is taken we need to do some image processing 
and analysis.Below we list some of the most used functions:

1. Thresholding
2. Pattern recognition and matching
3. Texture recognition
4. Barcode reading -A barcode is an optical machine readable representation of data,which shows data about the object by varying the widths and spacing's of parallel lines:
5.                               
6. 
7. OCR
8. Position
9. Edge Detection
10. Color analysis
11. Counting and Classification-Classification is tool for identifying an unknown objects by comparing its significant features to set of features that represent known samples.Typicallye.g.,we could have some bolts and screws we want to classify or count on an assembly line or something  

2. VISION Cameras:
           There exist different cameras used in machine vision.We can
divide into 3 categories based on their connections to the PC:
           • USB cameras-WebCam (simple than other cameras )
           • IEE1394(FireWire)cameras
          • GigE(Ethernet)cameras
  I am going to use USB webCam for my further discussion and project.
               



3. VISION Systems ( Software introduction ):
           National Instruments offers different kind Vision software
depending on your application
                   • NI Vision Acquisition Software
                   • NI Vision Development Module
                   • NI Vision Builder for Automated Inspections

          if you install all three packages,you will end up with the following palette in LabVIEW

                     

3.1   NI Vision Acquisition Software:
              The NI Vision Acquisition software is the basics software you need if you want to create Vision applications for  LabVIEW.
             The NI Vision Acquisition software includes the necessary 
drivers,such as NI-­IMAQ and NI IMAQdx.TheNI-IMAQdx driver 
software gives you the ability to acquire images through webcam.

3.2 Vision Development Module

TCS to hire 25,000 freshers this year 2014

TCS is an Indian multinational IT and cloud services,business solutions and consulting company.Its headquarters is located in Mumbai,Maharashtra.TCS was featured by forbes magazine and listed in top innovative companies in the world.Generally TCS will conduct the off campus interviews in the month of December and in campus interview through out the year.May be for 2014 batch the tcs off campus will be conducted in December 2014.
       As TCS had come to our college in september-05-2014 ,
and i got highered in TCS.I received a offer letter  2 days after selection.
  And as such i had got a good news for  family ,friends ,.
 wow...cool ...
After it i want to telll u this..

• TCS to recruit 50,000 employees this year
• TCS to complete campus hiring with 25,000 recruitments
• TCS (Tata Consultancy Services), India's largest software services provider, said it will hire close to 25,000 people  and with addition the company will exceed its target of hiring people for the previous years.

Tata Consultancy Services(TCS) has started application registration for the students who are going to passed out in the academic year 2014.Students who are pursuing the courses like...

BE/B.Tech/ME/M.Tech/BCA/BA/B.Sc have a chance to register with the nextstep tcs website.

LabVIEW Interface for Arduino Toolkit?

The LabVIEW Interface for Arduino (LIFA) Toolkit is a FREE download that allows   developers to acquire data from the  the Arduino  microcontroller and process it in the LabVIEW.

As LabVIEW provides Graphical Programming environment.The NI LabVIEW Interface for Arduino Toolkit helps you easily interface  the Arduino microcontroller with using LabVIEW.

To get these two talking together you must first  Download toolkit

A sketch for the Arduino microcontroller acts as an I/O engine that interfaces with LabVIEW VIs through a serial connection. 
This helps you quickly move information from Arduino pins to LabVIEW without adjusting the communication, synchronization, or even a single line of C code.isn't that is cool!.. 

Using the common Open, Read/Write, Close convention in LabVIEW, you can access the digital, analog, pulse-width-modulated, I2C, and SPI signals of the Arduino microcontroller. 

To learn how the under-the-hood functionality works so you can modify or extend it, look inside the subVIs or open the Arduino sketch. 
  
Remember this :The Arduino microcontroller must be connected to the computer with LabVIEW through a USBserial(useful for begineers), Bluetooth(i used Transceiver HC-05), or XBee link. 

Now,let's do some cool practicle stuff here,
follow below ttutorial..plz

Tutorial:       (simple LED blinking)

            Looks so easy..believe me try it for having nice beginning

• Make sure you have installed the LabVIEW Interface for Arduino.
• 
  
• Open the Simple LED Example VI (search for "Arduino" in the example finder once the toolkit is installed).
• 
  
• On the front panel, select the Arduino digital pin connected to the LED.
• 
  
• Build the circuit schematic shown on the block diagram.
• 
  
• Connect your Arduino to your PC with a USB cable. Optionally you can specify the COM port associated with your Arduino to the VISA resource terminal of the Init.vi to decrease the time require for LabVIEW to connect to the Arduino.
• 
  
• Click Run

  : Download vi code

Difference between NI-VAS, NI-VDM ,NI-VBAI

Vision Acquisition Software (VAS)     
 (Necessary Tool for Acquiring images/videos by USB Webcam)

          

             Vision Acquisition Software (VAS) is a set of drivers and utilities used to acquire, display, and save images from a wide range of camera types, including cameras using GigE Vision, IEEE 1394 (FireWire), USB 2.0, USB 3 Vision, or the Camera Link standard. VAS is included in both VDM and VBAI and installs a collection of three drivers:

• NI-IMAQ - acquisition from National Instruments frame grabbers, as well as general display, file saving and acquisition functions
• NI-IMAQdx - acquisition from GigE Vision, IEEE-1394 cameras, USB cameras that are DirectShow compliant (VAS 2009 onwards), and some IP cameras. 
• NI-IMAQ I/O - configuration of FPGA included in the PCI-8254R, PCI-8255R, Compact Vision System The drivers included with NI Vision Acquisition Software (VAS) allow the user to acquire, display, and save images from a wide range of cameras. However, only the NI VDM and NI VBAI software packages include built-in support for advanced image processing and analysis

Vision Development Module (VDM) 

           

              Vision Development Module (VDM) provides machine vision and image processing functions for LabVIEW, C/C++, Visual Basic, and .NET environments. In general, VDM functions are to be used for image processing and analysis. Some example uses include: pattern matching, particle analysis, edge detection, thresholding, histograms, and optical character recognition.

               In addition, VDM includes the Vision Assistant tool, a prototyping and code generation tool similar to NI Vision Builder in its menu-driven interface. Vision Assistant is a useful tool for developing and testing a series of image analysis and processing steps from which code can then be generated. The Vision Development Module is supported on Windows and LabVIEW Real-Time. This means you can use VDM on remote targets such as the NI CVS (Compact Vision System) or an NI Smart Camera.

Vision Builder for Automated Inspection (VBAI) 

           
             Vision Builder for Automated Inspection (VBAI) is a stand-alone, configurable machine vision development environment that requires no programming knowledge to configure. VBAI includes over 100 commonly used vision development tools including pattern matching, optical character recognition, and particle analysis. VBAI can run image processing inspections on remote targets and can also be used to configure those environments.