Dalsa's TDI camera delivers 1.2 Gpixels/s

Piranha's TDI method of line scanning provides dramatically increased responsivity compared to other video-scanning methods.

-- Test & Measurement World, 1/14/2010 7:00:00 AM

Based on a TDI (time-delay integration) sensor, the Piranha HS 12k linescan camera from Dalsa provides a resolution of 12,000x256 pixels, line speeds of up to 90 kHz, and a throughput of 1.2 Gpixels/s. What's more, the Piranha HS 12k camera offers up to 256 programmable TDI stages with a responsivity of 3450 DN (nJ/cm2) in a compact body that is only 180x90x92.5 mm.

According to the manufacturer, Piranha's TDI method of line scanning provides dramatically increased responsivity compared to other video-scanning methods. It also permits much greater scanning speeds in low light, or allows reduced lighting levels at conventional speeds. Advanced features, such as bidirectional operation, antiblooming, and programmability, make the HS 12k suitable for wafer, PCB, and LCD panel inspection.

With Dalsa's HSLink interface, the camera is able to achieve fast speeds, high resolution, and a compact design. The interface employs the key strengths of Camera Link and adds new features and functions. HSLink delivers scalable bandwidth in 300-Mbyte/s steps—from 300 Mbytes/s to 6000 Mbytes/s—while using globally available, off-the-shelf components.

The Piranha HS 12k is supported by Dalsa's Xcelera-HS PX8 frame grabber, which also leverages the HSLink interface to enable image-acquisition bandwidth of 1.5 Gbytes/s and host-transfer bandwidth of 2 Gbytes/s over multiple-lane PCI Express implementations. The camera also works with Dalsa's Sapera Essential software, a machine-vision toolkit that bundles board-level acquisition and control with image-processing capability. The Sapera Essential standard processing tool run-time license is offered at no additional charge when combined with a Dalsa frame grabber.

Dalsa, www.dalsa.com.