Problem with PCIe card
Answered
Hi,
We would like to capture a recording using 4 Flir Grasshopper3 USB3 cameras
(GS3-U3-32S4). We are connecting USB3 cameras using a USB
3.0 Interface Card PCIe (Fresco FL1100 - has four separate chips).
The PCIe card has an issue: its 4th port does not work properly. Interestingly, after each reboot, a different port is not working. Also, I connect the cameras through SpinView. Up to 2 cameras there is no problem. When I connect the third camera (all cameras are plugged into working PCIe ports), one of the cameras stops working. This camera was undetected and then detected again by the software every 2-3 seconds
I don't know what might be the issue with PCIe card, and how can I solve it.
Thanks for your help.
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Official comment
Hi Manuel,
Yes, it seems that the problem was related with the power supply. We changed the power cable from PC to PCIe card and also used another computer and the problem is solved. Thank you.
By the way, do you know any debugging tool that can be used to detect problem in such situations?
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Hi Goekce,
Did you connect the card to the power supply of the PC?
Do you happen to have the GPIO power supplies for the cameras?Best regards,
Manuel
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Hi Manuel,
Thanks for quick reply.
Yes, I connected the card to the power supply of PC.
Yes we also connect cameras to GPIO power supplies - We developed a synchronization box using this guideline: https://www.flir.eu/support-center/iis/machine-vision/application-note/configuring-synchronized-capture-with-multiple-cameras/
We used opto-isolated input/output pins
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It sounds as if you are using the GPIO ports to trigger, but not to power the cameras, right? Or did you open the heat shrink tube on the actual power supplies to be able to trigger the cameras?
If not, would it be possible to supply 12V to pin 7 (yellow)? GND is pin 5, brown.1 -
Yeah it is true, We don't use GPIO port to power the cameras.
so, do you suggest us to use pin 7 to power the cameras externally? Do you think the power supply from Framegraber might be not enough?
Thank you.
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Yes, I think it could be worth a try. Maybe the power supply of the PC is marginal. Especially since some of the ports randomly don't work and some cameras seem to keep rebooting.
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Hi Goekce, I'm glad to hear that. You could try to use a tool like usbdeview but I'm not sure if that shows you the power rating or the actual power output of a port. In general, the fact that it was always a different camera failing and the camera continuously rebooting is a good indication for insufficient power.
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Hi Manuel, thanks a lot for your reply.
We have an additional question related to our synchronization box. We are able to trigger one secondary camera through master camera, but we cannot trigger more than one camera. The issue might be related to the voltage of the pull-up resistor that we are using.
To develop the synchronization box, we followed this guideline https://www.flir.eu/support-center/iis/machine-vision/application-note/configuring-synchronized-capture-with-multiple-cameras/ and the technical manual of Grasshopper3. But the example in this document explains only connection with non-opto input/output pins. Is there any explanation/diagram that shows how the pull-up resistor should be connected when we use opto input/output pins.
I attached the configuration of our synchronization box. We made some observations to understand the issue better:
- We can trigger all four cameras through an external signal generator.
- If we set one camera as master: its output signal is ~ 3.4 V when it is not connected to the IN. The output signal drops to 1.84V when it is connected to 1 slave camera, it drops to 1.76V when connected to 2 slaves cam, and drops to 1.68V when connected to 3 slave cameras.
Thanks for your time in advance.
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Hi Goekce,
Could you please create a new post for this question to help us stay on top of things?
Thanks
Manuel
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Hi Manuel,
Sure. I've created now a new topic about this question
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