Analog and digital in a single network

Reusing analog cameras in a digital network preserves investments in costly legacy hardware.

Ann R. Thryft, Contributing Technical Editor -- Test & Measurement World, 12/16/2011 11:09:00 AM

See also: Can analog and digital vision hardware coexist?

Reusing analog cameras in a digital network preserves investments in costly legacy hardware, especially when those cameras use IR (infrared) to look for thermal anomalies on circuit boards, usually in the inspection of high-value, high-reliability electronics, said John Phillips, Pleora’s senior product manager. Most new IR cameras have GigE Vision interface options‚ but older units are most likely analog.

Pleora’s iPORT Analog-Pro IP engine, developed specifically to connect analog cameras to digital networks, uses GigE Vision and GenICam for camera control and video transfer over a GigE link, said Phillips. “The idea for the Analog-Pro product and the problem it solves came out of the military market, where they often use cameras very similar to those that appear in inspection systems,” he said. The ability to reuse high-value long-wave and short-wave IR cameras on military land vehicles when a system is upgraded is critical. It keeps cost down and reduces risk, since the cameras are prequalified to precise image quality and performance specifications. Rather than being connected to an analog frame grabber, two cameras can be connected to a single iPORT Analog-Pro. “It’s true that there’s still coax cabling between the cameras and the iPORT Analog-Pro, but you get rid of the much longer cabling between the camera and the vehicle’s mission computer,” he said.

Mixing analog and digital cameras lets you examine different objects simultaneously or examine the same object from different angles, said Donal Waide, BitFlow’s director of business development. In PC-based digital vision systems, you can attach multiple cameras of different types to a single digital frame grabber. The company’s Neon-CLD and Neon-CLQ Camera Link boards support simultaneous image capture from up to two or up to four Camera Link base cameras, respectively. Cameras can be PoCL (Power over Camera Link) and non-PoCL; they can have different resolutions, frame rates, and triggering modes; and you can synchronize some or all of them.

“If I also want to put an analog camera in the vision system, I simply plug in an analog frame grabber to one of the PC’s slots,” he said. “Since they can’t communicate with each other, only with the PC, the analog and digital frame grabbers—and their attached cameras—form independent subsystems within the PC-based vision system.” T&MW