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NI expands its digital camera support with three new PCI Express-based frame grabbers

1st November 2006

ES Admin

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National Instruments has announced that it has expanded its digital camera support with the release of three new PCI Express-based frame grabbers. With the new NI PCIe-8255R, NI PCIe-8231 and NI PCIe-1427 frame grabbers, National Instruments now offers support for every major digital camera bus, including IEEE 1394b, Gigabit Ethernet (GigE) Vision and Camera Link. The company is the only vision component provider to offer PCI Express hardware for all three major buses.

The NI PCIe-8255R frame grabber is an IEEE 1394 interface device that can acquire from both IEEE 1394a and IEEE 1394b cameras. The NI PCIe-8255R frame grabber features NI reconfigurable I/O technology, which combines an IEEE 1394 host adapter with the digital I/O required for industrial control and communication. In general, the IEEE 1394 standard gives engineers a simple, single-cable interface between a camera and a PC. It is ideal for applications requiring higher bandwidth as well as ease of use and stability, such as industrial inspection and machine vision.

“NI offers some of the industry’s best image acquisition products,” said Malcolm Steenburgh, Director of Point Grey Research. “The new NI PCIe-8255R frame grabber integrates seamlessly with Point Grey’s Flea2 29 by 29 by 30 mm IEEE 1394b camera.”

The GigE Vision standard provides high data rates, long cable lengths and low-cost cabling. With the NI PCIe-8231 frame grabber and included NI software, engineers can acquire images from more than 100 m away while using only a fraction of the computer’s CPU, leaving essential processing power available for complex machine vision algorithms. GigE Vision technology, compatible with standard Gigabit Ethernet cables, is an attractive interface option for security and monitoring applications.

The NI PCIe-1427 frame grabber provides low-cost image acquisition for base configuration Camera Link cameras. It offers bandwidth up to 225 MB/s and built-in industrial digital I/O, including isolation for industrial communication and encoder inputs for synchronising motion with vision. Camera Link cameras are ideal for applications that require a large amount of data throughput, such as line-scan applications and colour imaging.

Each frame grabber includes NI Vision Acquisition software, a single interface for acquiring, saving and displaying images from industrial cameras. This software is also included in both NI image processing packages, the NI Vision Development Module and NI Vision Builder for Automated Inspection.