Process Controller Camera Configuration

Process Controller has the ability to acquire data from a variety of sensors and meters. The rapid evolution of digital cameras presented an opportunity to add cameras as a data source for process controller. Cameras have become cheaper than any of the other sensors used by Process Controller. A challenge with cameras is that they produce a 2 dimensional array of data for each image collected and that data structure is incompatible with the data handling ability of Process Controller which assumes that a sensor or an external function returns a single data value. Camera configuration also is significantly more complex than calibration of most sensors.

To solve those challenges and integrate cameras into Process Controller a separate application was created to configure the Camera. The Camera Configure software is installed along with the rest of the ProCoDA application suite that now includes

• Process Controller
• EasyData
• pH meter
• Camera Configure

Process Controller now includes a new external function called Floc water interface.vi that can be accessed from the Rule Editor. The expectation is that as cameras are integrated into our labs that more external functions will be added with the capability to do different types of image analysis.

To set up a camera it is necessary to make sure that the camera is only being used by one application at a time. Thus if Process Controller is configured to be using the Camera it is absolutely necessary to first disable that external function or simply quit Process Controller. Then open Camera Configure.exe from the ProCoDA folder in program folder.

The Configure Camera application allows you to select which camera to use, to configure the video rate and image size, and depending on the camera to configure other camera settings.