Customer Solutions

New Los Alamos Camera, NTvision, Implemented on PXI

Author(s):

Len Burczyk, Los Alamos National Laboratory

Industry:

Government/Defense

Product:

LabVIEW, PXI/CompactPCI, Vision

The Challenge:

Developing a digital camera for sophisticated monitoring using state-of-the-art hardware and software.

The Solution:

Using PXI as our base platform, we created a PC-based camera that monitors sensitive and high-value material inventories.

Introduction
At Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, we are developing a new type of digital camera using National Instruments PXI hardware, IMAQ Vision software, and LabVIEW graphical programming software.

We designed the NTvision camera in our Nonproliferation and International Security Division for use in domestic and international nuclear safeguards. In this application, we will use the camera to continuously monitor sensitive and high value material inventories in locations throughout the world. In early 1998, we will test the NTvision camera in Russia, China, Europe, and the U.S. We developed the NTvision camera on a standard Windows NT desktop PC platform using the PCI bus, later porting it to PXI within a few hours. We did not need to make changes to the original code for the PXI version.

MMX Performance in PXI Camera
The new camera uses the PXI-8156 controller, which has Pentium MMX technology, to process pixels at a faster rate. With the industrial Eurocard packaging used for PXI, we deployed the system in a very short time at locations that would prove unsuitable for a desktop PC.

The NTvision camera is unique. Just as a regular camera provides a snapshot of a scene or a subject, NTvision records a snapshot, but only when the location or number of objects in a scene are changed. The camera can differentiate between a scene when there is a momentary change - for example, when a person or vehicle is passing through - and where objects are moved, added, altered, or taken. Because of its standard 35 mm camera optics, you can use the NTvision camera to photograph objects as small as those under a microscope or as large as the interior of a warehouse.

Once the camera is installed, it can watch a scene continuously, 24 hours per day. In real time, NTvision pinpoints the exact location of any object in a scene that has changed. Four frames provide a complete record that describes the event and the actual object difference.

We used PXI hardware building blocks to configure the NTvision video system. A high degree of flexibility in the configuration of different systems is possible because most NTvision systems are built from the same four hardware components; an 8-slot PXI-1000 chassis, a PXI-8156 Pentium MMX system controller, a PXI-1408 4-channel image acquisition module, and a PXI-6040E multifunction I/O module used for triggering.
Spare PXI chassis slots are available to extend the functionality of the NTvision video system. These spare slots can accept a wide variety of PXI modules from National Instruments and other vendors. In addition, because PXI is two-way interoperable with CompactPCI, you can also use CompactPCI modules from other vendors. With these numerous choices for the spare slots, users can intergrate NTvision with data acquisition, motion control, industrial communications, and instrumentation.

Intranet Capability with NTvision
The NTvision camera is intranet enabled. Data from an NTvision camera is available within moments after the camera detects an event by means of a secure intranet connection, much like that used on the public Internet for secure e-mail commerce.

A low-cost commercial browser and X.509 digital ID provide authorized remote access. The camera and client are mutually authenticated using the Secure Socket Layer (SSL 3.0). No other specialized software is required on the remote clients for data access. For time-critical applications, the NTvision camera alarm software is used to provide HTML-based e-mail, which includes the actual event image. In addition, digital pager technology is available for mobile users. The current version of NTvision can run up to 12 camera heads concurrently on a single PXI-1000 chassis. Several spare PXI slots are available to include other types of measurement functions specific to each application. In addition to testing for nuclear materials, we have identified other potential application areas for our PXI-based camera.

For more information, contact:

Len Burczyk

Technical Staff Member

Los Alamos National Laboratory

Tel: (505) 665-4273

Fax: (505) 665-5722

E-mail: lburczyk@lanl.gov

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