Board can acquire images from two Camera Link cameras at speeds up to 255MB/s and clock rates up to 85MHz, the maximum defined by Camera Link
With the new National Instruments PCIe-1430 image acquisition board, engineers and scientists can now use a single board to acquire images from two independent base-configuration Camera Link cameras.
Using PCI Express, the NI PCIe-1430 board can acquire images from two Camera Link cameras at speeds up to 255MB/s and clock rates up to 85MHz, the maximum defined by Camera Link.
"With the new NI PCIe-1430 frame grabber from National Instruments, our customers can acquire images from two high-resolution Sony Camera Link cameras at the same time," said Ilias Levis, product manager in the visual imaging products division of Sony Electronics.
"PCI Express bandwidth ensures reliable frame transfer with both cameras operating at full resolution and maximum frame rate".
Traditionally, engineers and scientists performing multicamera inspections through a PCI bus with data rates more than 100MB/s had to purchase multiple computers and multiple Camera Link frame grabbers.
With the introduction of PCI Express and the NI PCIe-1430 image acquisition board, these engineers and scientists now can acquire high-speed data from two independent cameras through a standard PC bus.
Unlike other dual-channel frame grabbers, the NI PCIe-1430 board can obtain information from cameras with different formats, resolutions, speeds and bit depths.
Additionally, several NI PCIe-1430 boards can be used together in a single PC to acquire gigabytes of images per second.
The NI PCIe-1430 board is said to be ideal for many machine vision and scientific imaging applications.
For instance, engineers can use two cameras with one PC to inspect objects at different angles.
Scientists also can reduce cost when acquiring high-resolution images by using the board with two lower-resolution cameras instead of one expensive high-resolution camera.
Each NI PCIe-1430 board includes two independent Camera Link connectors and one triggering line, which engineers and scientists can expand with the NI Camera Link I/O Extension Board to provide camera power and integrate additional triggers, isolated I/O and quadrature encode inputs.
The NI PCIe-1430 board is compatible with any base-configuration Camera Link camera and more than 150 supported cameras.
Engineers and scientists can configure their imaging applications with NI Vision Builder for Automated Inspection or program them using the NI Vision Development Module with the NI Labview graphical development environment, C/C++, Microsoft Visual Basic or Microsoft Visual Studio Net.
From a software perspective, the NI PCIe-1430 board behaves as two independent Camera Link frame grabbers, which makes migration from two frame grabber systems easy.
PCI Express is a high-performance, point-to-point serial interconnect that improves PCI performance by providing dedicated bus bandwidth.
PCI Express features a layered model that offers backward compatibility with existing PCI applications at the operating system level.
NI introduced the industry's first PCI Express image acquisition board, the NI PCIe-1429, last year (2004).
