Frame grabbers ride PCI Express
By Staff -- Test & Measurement World, 12/1/2006
Dalsa’s X64 Xcelera line of scalable frame grabbers for the PCI Express bus currently support Camera Link cameras, and the company reports that future versions will support multiple input progressive-scan analog and parallel low-voltage differential signaling (LVDS) digital cameras.
The initial Xcelera models include the X64 Xcelera-CL PX4 Dual and the X64 Xcelera-CL PX4 Full versions. Both half-length x4 PCI Express boards support 85-MHz operation and are compatible with 64-bit versions of Windows XP Professional.
The Dual version complies with Dalsa’s Trigger-to-Image Reliability (T2IR) framework to enhance acquisition control throughout the image-capture sequence, and it can acquire images from one Medium Camera Link camera or simultaneously from two Base cameras. The Dual version also performs FPGA-based processing (including Bayer decoding and shading correction for each input) and provides onboard optically isolated quadrature-shaft-encoder input.
The Full version can acquire images from one Base, Medium, or Full Camera Link camera. It can acquire images at rates to 1 Gbyte/s and transfer them to host memory at the same rate. The Full version of the frame grabber also supports an extended feature set for non-Camera Link configurations.
Base price: $1000. Dalsa, www.dalsa.com.
