Base Camera Link interface
Power over Camera Link (PoCL)
Provides Safe Power - full protection
from all CL power line faults
Fully backwards compatible with non-PoCL
cameras and cables
Half-Size x4 PCI Express Board
Acquire up to 24 bits at 85 MHz
Both CL and I/O connector on one bracket
(only one slot needed)
FlowThru technology means that no on-board
memory is needed, even with the fastest cameras
DMA at data rates up to 528 MB/S
Supports images up to 256K x 128K
No frame rate limit
Triggers and encoders for external control
of acquisition
Programmable signals generator for camera
control
Sophisticated triggering modes for complex
applications
Acquire variable length frames with
line scan cameras
Drivers, utilities and examples for
Windows 2000/XP/2003
Supported on both 32-bit and 64-bit
platforms
Drivers for most 3rd party processing
environments
Acquire image sequences well beyond
the 4GB barrier
RoHS compliant
Power over Camera
Link (PoCL) is an extension of the Camera
Link specification that allows for frame grabbers
to provide power to small cameras over the
Camera Link cable. PoCL provides many advantages
to the OEM. First, the cabling is vastly simplified
as only a single cable is required for data,
power and control to the camera. This provides
all the convenience of Firewire or USB cables
schemes with the addition of industrial cabling
and much higher data rates. Another advantage
is that, because only a single cable is required,
the camera footprint can be greatly reduced.
For the first time, the so called "dice
camera" format factor is supported by
an industrial, digital interconnect.
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The baseline
PoCL specification only outlines the
basic requirement of the frame grabber
providing power to the camera. However,
with out some protection, there are
many situations that can occur where
the frame grabber can be damaged and/or
the PC the board is installed in. To
overcome these problems, and ancillary
provision was added to the PoCL standard
called "Safe Power". The Safe
Power specification takes into account
every possible situation that might
occur on the CL power lines, and protects
the frame grabber and the PC. Safe Power
also provides a path for backwards compatiblity
for non-PoCL cameras and non-PoCL cables.
Because the risks are so great, it doesn't
even make sense to buy a PoCL frame
grabber unless it supports Safe Power |
Since 1996 years,
BitFlow's camera interface products have been
built around our revolutionary FlowThru architecture.
Comprised of a user-programmable Video Pipeline,
a flexible Camera Control Unit, efficient
high-speed video FIFOs and a highly-optimized
scatter/gather DMA engine, the FlowThru architecture
allows the Neon-CL to control, acquire, reformat
and transfer video data directly into the
user's application at camera speeds with zero
latency or CPU usage. Our FlowThru architecture
has been continuously optimized and enhanced
to support a wide variety of imaging applications
such as document/package processing, semiconductor,
continuous web inspection, sequence capture
and motion analysis and can easily be adapted
to the specific needs of your application.
The Neon-CL is
supported by the BitFlow Software Development
Kit (SDK), which is available for both 32-bit
and 64-bit Windows platforms. The SDK is board
family generic, and will work with all of
BitFlow's frame grabbers (making future migration
to other families trivial). The kit provides
drivers, DLLs and configuration utilities
for people interested in using third party
software. For customers interested in developing
their own applications, the SDK provides header
files, libraries and huge amounts of example
code. The SDK provides a wide range of Application
Programming Interfaces (API), from low-level
direct hardware access, to high-level automatic
buffer management (ring or sequence). Every
line of code has been engineered for reliability
under the toughest industrial conditions.
At the same time, a priority has been put
on ease of use and short development times.
With the BitFlow SDK, you'll have the Neon-CL
integrated with your application in no time.
The Neon-CL uses
a x4 PCI Express bus interface. The PCI Express
bus offers huge increases in DMA performance
over the PCI bus. However, what is less well
known is that the PCI Express bus is always
peer to peer. This means the the Karbon-CL
does not share the bus with any other devices.
In most motherboard architectures, it will
talk directly to the PCI chipset that is on
the memory bus. This direct connection equates
to higher sustained DMA bandwidths regardless
of system load. Also, most motherboards support
concurrent full DMA speed on all of their
PCI Express slots. The board will work in
any slot that it fits in. This means not only
x16, x8 and x4 slots, but also, as is becoming
the trend, x1 slots that use x4 (or larger)
connectors. Performance will be degraded in
an x1 slot, but the board will work fine in
applications that don't require maximum data
rate.
Supported
by a GUI camera file editing utility (CamEd),
the Neon can acquire fixed or variable size
images and features a programmable ROI (Region
Of Interest) sub-windowing capability. The
board provides a full set of camera control
signals (CC1, CC2, CC3, CC4) and sync inputs
(LVAL, FVAL, PCLK, trigger and encoder) for
total camera and acquisition control. These
signals are completely independent, although
there are provision for driving all cameras
from a signal set up encoder/trigger signals.
There is also a large number of programmable
general purpose outputs and inputs that are
not tied to the camera's timing. The Neon-CL
board, as with our past interface products,
supports not only simple triggering modes
but also complicated, application-specific
triggering and control interactions with your
hardware environment.
