BitFlow CYT-PC2-CXP4 Cyton Quad Channel CoaXPress Frame Grabber

Video is captured at speeds of up to 6.25 Gigabits/Second (Gb/S). Simultaneously, control commands and triggers can be sent to the camera 20 Mb/S (with a trigger accuracy of +/- nanoseconds). Up to 13 W of power can also be supplied to the camera. All this happens over a single piece of industry standard 75 Ohm coaxial cable.

Multiple CXP links can be aggregated to support higher data rates (e.g. four links provide 25 Gb/S of data).

The CXP standard opens the door to applications where cable cost, routing requirements and long distances have prevented the move to high resolution, high speed digital cameras. In many cases, existing coaxial infrastructure can be repurposed for CXP with very low installation costs.

The Cyton-CXP is based on BitFlow's brand new PCIe Gen 2.0 platform. To develop the Cyton platform, we first started with a clean slate, and asked ourselves, "what does a next generation frame grabber need?" For sure, it needs a Gen 2.0 PCIe x8 back end for the ultimate high speed access to hostmemory. It also needs a sophisticated DMA engine to handle the demands of new camera interface standards. New standards demand flexibility. For example, CXP cameras will soon be able to put out streams of random sized ROIs, something our previous generation DMA engine was not capable of. Finally, we know based on years of experience of making frame grabbers, that it needs flexible and powerful I/O, triggering and routing. The CoaXPress front end is based on our Karbon-CXP, but upgraded and ready for the coming changes in the CXP standards. The Cyton platform is the foundation for today's and tomorrows frame grabbers, be it CoaXPress, Camera Link, or whatever new standards emerge from the Machine Vision industry.

Features:

• Efficient support for variable sized images with fast context switches between frames
• Per frame control of acquisition properties (AOI specifically)
• Hardware control of image sequencing
• Enhanced debug capabilities
• Efficient support for on-demand buffer allocation (Genicam model)
• Gracefully recover from dropped packets (either on the input side or the DMA side)

Specifications:

• Half-Size x8 PCI Gen 2.0 Express Board
• CoaXPress 1.0 compliant
• Supports one to four CXP-6 cameras
• Supports multi-link CXP-6 cameras (up to four CXP links)
• Supports CXP speeds from 1.250 to 6.250 Gb/S
• Supports simultaneous capture from four 6.250 Gb/S CXP links
• Provides one CXP-6 uplink to the camera (bulk data uploads, zero latency triggers)
• Low speed uplink also supported on all links
• Uses DIN 1.0/2.3 connectors
• Uses CXP standard 4+1 connector spacing
• Provides power for all cameras (up to 13 Watts per link)
• Provides Safe Power, full protection from all power line faults
• Cameras are Plug and Play with automatic link speed detection
• Cable lengths of up to 135 meters are supported
• Cameras can be accurately synchronized, or can be completely independent
• PCI Express x8 Gen 2.0 interface (also works in x16 slots)
• Compatible with PCI Epress Gen 1.0 slots
• Separate I/O for each camera
• Highly deterministic, low latency frame grabber to camera trigger
• Supports simultaneous serial communications to all cameras
• Windows "sees" a separate frame grabber for each camera
• FlowThru technology means no on-board memory is needed
• Acquire variable length frames from line scan cameras
• Acquire image sequences well beyond the 4GB barrier
• No frame rate limit
• Triggers and encoders for external control of acquisition
• Programmable signal generator for camera control (independent for each camera)
• Quadrature encoder support including sophisticated triggering schemes
• Encoder divider/multiplier
• Drivers, utilities and examples for Windows and Linux
• Supported on both 32-bit and 64-bit platforms
• Drivers for most 3rd party processing environments (e.g. HALCON, LabView, VisionPro, MATLAB, etc.)
• Full GenICam support for control and capture
• All models are "half size" PCIe cards
• RoHS compliant