Speed was a recurrent theme at the GigE Vision and Genicam technology day hosted by Firstsight Vision at the RBS Williams F1 Conference Centre, Oxfordshire, UK
Through a series of presentations, details of the GigE Vision and Genicam standards and their interrelation were explained together with a discussion of their future importance.
GigE Vision is a new camera interface standard developed using the gigabit ethernet communication protocol.
Its importance lies in the fact that it allows for high speed image transfer using low cost standard cables over very long lengths.
Data transfer at rates up to 1Gb/s is possible over cable lengths up to 100m long.
Genicam is a new programming interface standard for machine vision cameras, which lets customers use a single piece of code to configure cameras produced by different vendors and equipped with a variety of interface technologies such as 1394, GigE, or Camera Link.
Presentations were made by Christof Zollitsch (CTO), Martin Kersting (VP engineering), Rupert Stelz (senior developer) from Firstsight's parent company, Stemmer Imaging.
Stemmer was a founder member of the group that has been developing and refining the GigE Vision standard under the auspices of the European Machine Vision Association.
Both Martin Kersting and Rupert Stelz have sat on the committees responsible for developing the new standards and so brought first-hand knowledge of this exciting new technology.
The two key messages for the day were not only the potentials for fast data transfer over long distances, but also the ability to connect compatible components from different vendors.
This was illustrated though practical examples of the technology in action and it also highlighted Firstsight Vision's commitment to ensuring that any components sold by the company for a vision system will be guaranteed to be compatible with each other.
Acknowledging the importance of GigE Vision technology, Firstsight Vision has produced a GigE Vision technology datasheet, which covers the many products from its portfolio available for the new technology.
This includes software, linescan and progressive scan cameras, cabling, acquisition interfaces, and accessories such as lighting controllers, ethernet trigger and I/O controllers, switches and network adapter cards.
