PCIe frame grabbers support major digicam buses

National Instruments (NI) has added to its digital camera support three PCIe-based frame grabbers. With the NI PCIe-8255R, NI PCIe-8231 and NI PCIe-1427 frame grabbers, the company is offering support for every major digital camera bus, including IEEE 1394b, GbE Vision and Camera Link. NI claimed it is the only vision component provider to offer PCIe 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. It features 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 suitable for applications requiring higher bandwidth as well as ease-of-use and stability, such as industrial inspection and machine vision.

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 100m away while using only a fraction of the computers CPU, leaving essential processing power available for complex machine vision algorithms. GigE Vision technology, compatible with standard GbE cables, is a suitable option for security and monitoring applications.

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

Each frame grabber includes NI vision acquisition software and a single interface for acquiring, saving and displaying images from industrial cameras.