A new family of FPGA-based GigE frame grabbers is now available from Stemmer Imaging. The Silicon Software microEnable IV AQ4-GE and VQ4-GE can accommodate up to 4 GigE cameras simultaneously. The on-board FPGA provides real-time image processing significantly reducing the load on the host CPU. Both frame grabbers are also available in PoE (Power over Ethernet) versions.
The microEnable IV AQ4-GE is a simple to use acquisition board that, through standard AcquisitionApplets, provides simple FPGA processing functions. This allows processes such as flat field corrections and high quality colour reconstructions from raw Bayer data to be carried out at high speed without any complex set-up.
The VQ4-GE offers the added versatility of providing extended FPGA image processing using VisualApplets and SmartApplets. SmartApplets allow application-specific image processing sequences to be loaded to the FPGA from pre-programmed designs, while VisualApplets is a software tool for programming powerful customised image processing tasks into executable hardware code for the FPGA from a library of more than 200 basic and complex image processing operators.
A variety of 'add-on' boards are also available for the AQ4-GE and VQ4-GE to extend the range of image acquisition, processing and signal processing. PixelPlant features an additional vision processor, memory and digital I/O for even more complex image processing tasks, and is accessed through a high bandwidth interface. The Trigger digital I/O interface enables the integration of peripheral devices such as conveyor encoders or light source controllers.
