MATLAB: Does the Image Acquisition Toolbox support the USB or FireWire (IEEE-1394) camera

Question

I would like to confirm that my camera will work with the Image Acquisition Toolbox.

Answer 1

The Image Acquisition Toolbox supports a broad range of imaging hardware including frame grabbers and Windows video capture devices. For a complete list of hardware supported by the Image Acquisition Toolbox, visit the supported hardware page, found by navigating to:

http://www.mathworks.com/products/imaq/

and clicking on "Supported Hardware".

In addition to supporting various frame grabber manufacturers, the toolbox supports FireWire digital cameras that support the IIDC 1394-based Digital Camera Specification (DCAM), as well as generic Windows video hardware like USB cameras.

1) The toolbox supports connections to IEEE 1394 (FireWire) DCAM-compliant devices using the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) DCAM driver.

To test your FireWire camera for compatibility with the toolbox, download the CMU 1394 Digital Camera driver from the CMU Web site

http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~iwan/1394

and run their demo application (1394CameraDemo.exe).

For additional information on DCAM support, visit the Image Acquisition Toolbox supported hardware page listed above.

2) Generic Windows video capture devices are required to be DirectX (DirectShow) compatible for them to work with the Image Acquisition Toolbox. In order for a device to be DirectX compatible, it must provide a WDM (Windows Driver Model) or VFW (Video For Windows) driver.

You can determine if your device is DirectX compatible by running Microsoft's NetMeeting application, or by running the Microsoft image capture application, AMCap.exe.

If you are able to successfully operate your device with NetMeeting or the above utility without encountering any errors, the video capture device is expected to work with the toolbox.

For additional information on generic Windows video hardware support, visit the Image Acquisition Toolbox supported hardware page listed above.