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CABLES ANALOG VIDEO BIT MAXX CAMERA CASE CAMERA LINK COAXPRESS FIREWIRE GIGABIT ETHERNET INTERNAL CAMERA LINK POWER SUPPLIES SPECIALITY UEYE CAMERAS BASLER CIS AMERICAS HITACHI USA IMPERX IO INDUSTRIES NET USA PHOTON FOCUS SMARTEK XIMEA SOFTWARE COAX CHIPS EQCOLOGIC DVR SYSTEMS CUSTOM SYSTEMS DVR SYSTEMS SOFTWARE FILTERS & LENSES FUJINON GOYO MIDOPT ZEISS FRAME GRABBERS ADLINK BIT FLOW IMPERX SOFTWARE LIGHTING METAPHASE MONITORS TRU-VU SIGNAL CONVERTERS ECQOLOGIC IMPERX SENSOR TO IMAGE VIVID ENGINEERING SOFTWARE

BitFlow

MODEL

FEATURES

DETAILS

ALT-PCE-AN1

Supports one analog camera
x4 PCIe interface
Camera power for each camera
Industrial I/O

ALT-PCE-AN2

Supports up to two analog camera
x4 PCIe interface
Camera power for each camera
Industrial I/O

ALT-PCE-AN4

Supports up to four analog cameras
x4 PCIe interface
Camera power for each camera
Industrial I/O

SDK 5.00 or later required

Alta Analog Frame Grabber
The Alta-AN is an affordable, versatile analog product family for Semiconductor and Industrial Vision OEMs. This family can acquire from almost any analog cameras on the market, from high speed asynchronous-reset monochrome cameras to super high resolution color HDTV cameras. The Alta frame grabbers are high-quality, flexible, PCI Express bus imaging products, well supported by an easy-to-use SDK, and drivers for most popular software imaging packages.

There are three main models in the Alta family: Alta-AN1, Alta-AN2 and Alta-AN4. The Alta-AN1 has one Virtual Frame Grabber (VFG) and can support one analog camera of any type. The Alta-AN2 has two VFGs and support two cameras, and the Alta-AN4 has four VFGs and support four cameras. Each Alta model is a half size x4 PCI Express board (supporting total data rate up to 1.0 GB/S). Each VFG is a completely independent frame grabber. This means that each VFG can be configured for a different camera, different triggering mode, different destination buffer and can be in a different acquisition state than the other VFGs. But most importantly, all of the VFGs on one board can acquire simultaneously, at the cameras full frame rate and resolution.

x4 PCI Express "short" card"
Super high quality discrete Analog Front End
Three A-to-Ds per VFG (maximum clock rate: 160 MHz)
Supports VGA, SVGA, XGA, SXGA, UXGA resolutions and beyond
Per channel programmable Gain/offset
Supports single tap and dual tap monochrome cameras
Supports RGB cameras (24 bits/pixel)
Supports component YPbPr cameras (YUV 4:4:4)
Supports asynchronous reset cameras
Supports partial scan cameras (high frame rates)
Multiplex between two one-tap or two two-tap cameras
Programmable Region of Interest (ROI) via sub-windowing acquisition
External hardware or software trigger
Acquire at any frame rate
Supports cameras up to 16K x 16K
Supports interlaced and progressive scan cameras
HD/VD/Composite sync signals in/out
Supports WEN input signal
Strobe output (programmable timing)
Provides power to camera (12 V @ 0.5 A)
Flowthru technology, no on-board frame buffers, zero latency data access
Efficient interrupt driven architecture, no software polling required
RoHS compliant

VFG Details
Each member of the Alta family has from one to four VFGs. Each VFG has its own analog front end, each with three Analog-to-Digital converters. Each VFG has its own PLL and synchronization signals processor allowing it to run on its own timing, completely independent of the other VFGs on the same board. The Video Router is fully programmable and can be used to route the output of one, two or three tap cameras to one, two or three A-to-Ds respectively. In addition, the Video Router can be used to MUX between two cameras (one or two tap cameras only).

Digital data formatting and buffering is handled in the large Data MUX block. The output from this block feeds our advanced bus-mastering, scatter-gather DMA engine, which DMAs data to host memory at a rate of a gigabyte per second. This engine can DMA continuously to multiple host buffers without using any CPU cycles. In short, the Alta VFG is a small efficient frame grabber, up to four of which can be packed on one half-sized PCI Express board.

Software Support
The Alta-AN is supported by the BitFlow Software Development Kit (SDK), which is available for both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows platforms. The SDK is board family generic, and will work with all of BitFlow's current and future frame grabbers. The kit provides drivers, DLLs and configuration utilities for people interested in using third party software.

For customers interested in developing their own applications, the SDK provides header files, libraries and huge amounts of example code. There is wide range of Application Programming Interfaces (API), from low-level direct hardware access, to high-level automatic buffer management (ring or sequence). Every line of code has been engineered for reliability under the toughest industrial conditions, while at the same time a priority has been put on ease of use and short development times. With the BitFlow SDK you'll have the Alta-AN integrated with your application in no time.

PCI Express Interface
The Alta-AN uses a x4 PCI Express bus interface. The PCI Express bus offers huge increases in DMA performance over the PCI bus, but what is less well known is that the PCI Express bus is always peer to peer. This means that the Alta-AN does not share the bus with any other devices. In most motherboard architectures, it will talk directly to the PCI chip set that is on the memory bus. This direct connection equates to higher sustained DMA bandwidths regardless of system load.

Alta-AN Specifications

Parameters	Alta-AN1	Alta-AN2	Alta-AN4
Number of simultaneous monochrome cameras	1	2	4
Number of simultaneous two-tap cameras	1	2	4
Number of simultaneous RGB cameras	1	2	4
Number of trigger inputs	1	2	4
Total number of camera MUXed	2	4	8

KBN-PCE-CL2-D

One or two independent base CL cameras

KBN-PCE-CL2-F

One base, medium or full CL camera

KBN-PCE-CL2-F-IP4

One base, medium, full or 10 tap CL camera

KBN-PCE-CL4-D

Up to four independent base CL cameras

KBN-PCE-CL4-F

Up to two independent base, medium or full CL cameras

KBN-PCE-CL4-F-IP4

Up to two independent base, medium, full or 10-tap CL cameras

SDK 5.00 or later required

Karbon-CL
The world's first four-camera PCI Express frame grabber. It can simultaneously acquire from up to four Base CL cameras or two Full CL cameras (including 10-tap CL). It is built on top of BitFlow's FlowThru technology, which provides zero latency access to data, super low CPU usage, and unlimited DMA destination size. The Karbon-CL is the first member of BitFlow's Karbon family, a platform that will host a wide variety of virtual frame grabbers. These virtual frame grabbers can be customized to meet your specific needs.

The Karbon-CL has been designed with two main applications in mind. First, in situations where more than one camera is needed, the Karbon-CL can reduce both the system cost and the hardware footprint by its ability to acquire from up to four cameras. Second, in situations where extremely high data rates and/or frame rates are required, the Karbon-CL has been designed to acqcuire up to 160 bits at 85 MHz pixel clock rate and DMA at data rates up to 2.0 GB/S. For example, the Karbon-CL can acquire simultaneously from two 10-tap CL cameras.

Half-Size x8 PCI Express Board
Up to 160 bits input at 85 MHz
Acquire from four independent Base CL cameras
Acquire from two independent Medium/Full CL cameras
Acquire from two 10-tap CL cameras
FlowThru technology eliminates the need for on-board frame buffers, even with the fastest cameras
Hardware Bayer matrix decoding (optional)
Multi-tap cameras rasterized on the fly
Highly configurable acquisition engine
DMA at data rates up to 2.0 GB/S
Supports images up to 256K x 128K
No frame rate limit
Quadrature encoder support including sophisticated triggering schemes
Encoder divider/multiplier
On board timing generator supports high-resolution exposure control
Independent trigger and encoder inputs for each camera
Independent CCs outputs for each camera
General purpose I/O
Appears to software as four independently programmable frame grabbers
Supported by the BitFlow SDK on 32 and 64-bit Windows
Acquire image sequences well beyond the 4 GB barrier
Drivers, utilities and examples for Windows XP/2003/Vista/Windows 7
RoHS Complaint

Virtual Frame Grabber
One of the exciting new features of the Karbon-CL is the support for virtual frame grabbers. A virtual frame grabber, from the software and interface point of view, is identical to a normal frame grabber. The difference is that the Karbon architecture can support a wide variety of different virtual frame grabbers with no change in the hardware. This design can also support different numbers of frame grabbers on the same platform. For example, the Karbon-CL can be configured as two full Camera Link frame grabbers, or it can be configured as four base Camera Link frame grabbers. The software will see two or four (respectively) completely independent frame grabbers. The Karbon-CL could even look like one "double full" frame grabber (160 bits), if and when the camera manufacturers come up with one. Further, the board become an interface for the completely non-standard device that you might be designing in your lab, just lets us know your requirements. Switching between the different virtual grabbers only requires a press of a button in our configuration tool. As the Karbon family expands, you'll see more new and exciting uses of this virtual frame grabber architecture.

FlowThru Architecture
For the last 10 years, BitFlow's camera interface products have been built around our revolutionary FlowThru architecture. Comprised of a user-programmable Video Pipeline, a flexible Camera Control Unit, efficient high-speed video FIFOs and a highly-optimized scatter/gather DMA engine, the FlowThru architecture allows the Karbon-CL to control, acquire, reformat and transfer video data directly into the user's application at camera speeds with zero latency or CPU usage. Our FlowThru architecture has been continuously optimized and enhanced to support a wide variety of imaging applications such as document/package processing, semiconductor, continuous web inspection, sequence capture and motion analysis and can easily be adapted to the specific needs of your application.

PCI Express Interface
The Karbon-CL uses a x8 PCI Express bus interface. The PCI Express bus offers huge increases in DMA performance over the PCI bus. However, what is less well known is that the PCI Express bus is always peer to peer. This means the the Karbon-CL does not share the bus with any other devices. In most motherboard architectures, it will talk directly to the PCI chipset that is on the memory bus. This direct connection equates to higher sustained DMA bandwidths regardless of system load. Also, most motherboards support concurrent full DMA speed on all of their PCI Express slots. The board will work in any slot that it fits in. This means not only x16 and x8 slots, but also, as is becoming the trend, x4 and x1 slots that use x16 connectors. Performance will be degraded in x1 and x4 slots, but the board will work fine in applications that don't require maximum data rate.

Camera Control and I/O
Supported by a GUI camera file editing utility (CamEd), the Karbon can acquire fixed or variable size images and features a programmable ROI (Region Of Interest) sub-windowing capability. The board provides a full set of camera control signals (CC1, CC2, CC3, CC4) and sync inputs (LVAL, FVAL, PCLK, trigger and encoder) for each camera connected to the board (up to four cameras can be connected). These signals are completely independent, although there are provision for driving all cameras from a signal set up encoder/trigger signals. There is also a large number of programmable general purpose outputs and inputs that are not tied to the camera's timing. The Karbon-CL board, as with our past interface products, supports not only simple triggering modes but also complicated, application-specific triggering and control interactions with your hardware environment.

KBN-PCE-CXP1

One CXP camera up running at 6.25 Gb/S or slower

KBN-PCE-CXP2

Two CXP cameras up running at 6.25 Gb/S or slower One two-link CXP camera up running at 6.25 Gb/S or slower

KBN-PCE-CXP4

Four CXP cameras up running at 3.125 Gb/S or slower Two two-link CXP cameras up running at 3.125 Gb/S or slower

SDK 5.70 or later for CXP boards

Introducing CoaXPress KBN-PCE-CXP2-V8

CoaXPress (CXP) is a simple, yet powerful, standard for moving high speed serial data from a camera to a frame grabber. Video is captured at speeds of up to 6 Gigabits/Second (Gb/S). On the same cable, control commands and triggers can be sent back at 20 Megabits /Second (Mb/S). Power is also 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 Karbon Platform
The Karbon platform has been shipping with a Camera Link front-end for many years. The acquisition and DMA engines have been tested under harsh industrial conditions, running 24/7, and has proven to be robust and reliable.

The Karbon-CXP Advantages
CoaXPress solves many of the problems of previous machine vision standards. It eliminates the cost and distance restrictions of Camera Link cables. It provides a huge increase in quality, resolution and speed over analog, while maintaining its simple and flexible cabling. GigE also uses low cost and long distance capable cabling, but introduces trigger latency and determinism issues that CXP does not have. The Karbon-CXP gives your application all of these advantages on an industry proven platform.

Half-Size x8 PCI Express Board
CoaXPress 1.0 compliant
Supports one to four CXP cameras
Supports multi-link CXP cameras (up to four CXP links)
Supports CXP speeds from 1.250 to 6.250 Gb/S
Provides power for all cameras (up to 13 Watts per camera)
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 unsynchronized
PCI Express x8 interface (also works in x16 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 XP/Vista/Windows 7
Supports 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

FlowThru Architecture
For well over 10 years, BitFlow's camera interface products have been built around our revolutionary FlowThru architecture. Comprised of a user-programmable Video Pipeline, a flexible Camera Control Unit, efficient high-speed video FIFOs and a highly-optimized scatter/gather DMA engine, the FlowThru architecture allows the Karbon-CL to control, acquire, reformat and transfer video data directly into the user's application at camera speeds with zero latency or CPU usage. Our FlowThru architecture has been continuously optimized and enhanced to support a wide variety of imaging applications such as document/package processing, semiconductor, continuous web inspection, sequence capture and motion analysis and can easily be adapted to the specific needs of your application.

PCI Express Interface
The Karbon-CXP uses a x8 PCI Express bus interface. The PCI Express bus offers huge increases in DMA performance over the PCI bus. However, what is less well known is that the PCI Express bus is always peer to peer. This means the the Karbon-CXP does not share the bus with any other devices. In most motherboard architectures, it will talk directly to the PCI chipset that is on the memory bus. This direct connection equates to higher sustained DMA bandwidths regardless of system load. Also, most motherboards support concurrent full DMA speed on all of their PCI Express slots. The board will work in any slot that it fits in. This means not only x16 and x8 slots, but also, as is becoming the trend, x4 and x1 slots that use x16 connectors. Performance will be degraded in x1 and x4 slots, but the board will work fine in applications that don't require maximum data rate.

Camera Control and I/O
Supported by a GUI camera file editing utility (CamEd), the Karbon-CXP can acquire fixed or variable size images and features a programmable ROI (Region Of Interest) sub-windowing capability. The board provides a full set of camera control signals (CC1, CC2, CC3, CC4) and sync inputs (LVAL, FVAL, PCLK, trigger and encoder) for each camera connected to the board (up to four cameras can be connected). These signals are completely independent, although there are provision for driving all cameras from a signal set up encoder/trigger signals. There is also a large number of programmable general purpose outputs and inputs that are not tied to the camera's timing. The Karbon-CL board, as with our past interface products, supports not only simple triggering modes but also complicated, application-specific triggering and control interactions with your hardware environment.

The Karbon-CXP Block Diagram

Karbon-CXP1

Application Support
Adding the Karbon-CXP to your application is simple with our SDK, which supports both 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems. Applications can be developed using C/C++/.NET and our sophisticated buffer management APIs. In addition, free drivers can be download from our web site for most 3rd party machine vision packages. The Karbon models are software compatible with each other, as well as with all the other current BitFlow frame grabbers. This makes migrating applications from Camera Link or analog to CXP simple and quick.

NEO-PCE-CLB

One CL base camera
PoCL with Safe Power
x4 PCI Express
CL and I/O on edge bracket

SDK 5.00 or later required

Neon-CLB
Simplify your industrial, medical, or semiconductor imaging application with BitFlow's Neon-CLB, the easiest to use and most reliable Base/PoCL Camera Link frame grabber available anywhere. The Neon-CLB captures images at up to the camera's highest frame/data rate, with precision image acquisition suitable for the most demanding applications.

The Neon-CLB is designed for the OEM that needs the performance of the PCI Express bus, BitFlow's famous industrial quality, and one of the lowest price points in the industry. The Neon-CLB can acquire from ALL Base CL cameras and has enough industrial I/O to handle even the most complicated synchronization tasks.

Adding the Neon-CLB to your application is simple with our SDK, which supports both 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems. The SDK provides high level APIs for sophisticated buffer management and low-level direct access to the board for speedy custom control.

If you need the simplest, most reliable, and best performing Base Camera Link and PoCL frame grabber, call BitFlow today to get our OEM-priced Neon-CLB, BitFlow's 4th generation of robust, industrial Camera Link imaging products.

Base Camera Link interface
Power over Camera Link (PoCL)
Supports both PoCL and non-PoCL cameras
Provides Safe Power - full protection from all CL power line faults
Fully backwards compatible with non-PoCL cameras and cables
Half-Size x4 PCI Express Board
Acquire up to 24 bits at 85 MHz
Both CL and I/O connector on one bracket (only one slot needed)
FlowThru technology means that no on-board memory is needed, even with the fastest cameras
DMA at data rates up to 528 MB/S
Supports images up to 256K x 128K
No frame rate limit
Triggers and encoders for external control of acquisition
Programmable signal generator for camera control
Sophisticated triggering modes for complex applications
Acquire variable length frames with line scan cameras
Quadrature encoder support including sophisticated triggering schemes * Encoder divider/multiplier
On board timing generator supports high-resolution exposure control
Drivers, utilities and examples for Windows XP/2003/Vista/Windows 7
Supported on both 32-bit and 64-bit platforms
Drivers for most 3rd party processing environments
Acquire image sequences well beyond the 4GB barrier
RoHS compliant

PoCL Safe Power
The baseline PoCL specification only outlines the basic requirement of the frame grabber providing power to the camera. However, with out some protection, there are many situations that can occur where the frame grabber can be damaged and/or the PC the board is installed in. To overcome these problems, and ancillary provision was added to the PoCL standard called "Safe Power". The Safe Power specification takes into account every possible situation that might occur on the CL power lines, and protects the frame grabber and the PC. Safe Power also provides a path for backwards compatiblity for non-PoCL cameras and non-PoCL cables. Because the risks are so great, it doesn't even make sense to buy a PoCL frame grabber unless it supports Safe Power

FlowThru Architecture
Since 1996 years, BitFlow's camera interface products have been built around our revolutionary FlowThru architecture. Comprised of a user-programmable Video Pipeline, a flexible Camera Control Unit, efficient high-speed video FIFOs and a highly-optimized scatter/gather DMA engine, the FlowThru architecture allows the Neon-CLB to control, acquire, reformat and transfer video data directly into the user's application at camera speeds with zero latency or CPU usage. Our FlowThru architecture has been continuously optimized and enhanced to support a wide variety of imaging applications such as document/package processing, semiconductor, continuous web inspection, sequence capture and motion analysis and can easily be adapted to the specific needs of your application.

Software Support
The Neon-CLB is supported by the BitFlow Software Development Kit (SDK), which is available for both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows platforms. The SDK is board family generic, and will work with all of BitFlow's frame grabbers (making future migration to other families trivial). The kit provides drivers, DLLs and configuration utilities for people interested in using third party software. For customers interested in developing their own applications, the SDK provides header files, libraries and huge amounts of example code. The SDK provides a wide range of Application Programming Interfaces (API), from low-level direct hardware access, to high-level automatic buffer management (ring or sequence). Every line of code has been engineered for reliability under the toughest industrial conditions. At the same time, a priority has been put on ease of use and short development times. With the BitFlow SDK, you'll have the Neon-CLB integrated with your application in no time.

PCI Express Interface
The Neon-CLB uses a x4 PCI Express bus interface. The PCI Express bus offers huge increases in DMA performance over the PCI bus. However, what is less well known is that the PCI Express bus is always peer to peer. This means the the Karbon-CL does not share the bus with any other devices. In most motherboard architectures, it will talk directly to the PCI chipset that is on the memory bus. This direct connection equates to higher sustained DMA bandwidths regardless of system load. Also, most motherboards support concurrent full DMA speed on all of their PCI Express slots. The board will work in any slot that it fits in. This means not only x16, x8 and x4 slots, but also, as is becoming the trend, x1 slots that use x4 (or larger) connectors. Performance will be degraded in an x1 slot, but the board will work fine in applications that don't require maximum data rate.

Camera Control and I/O
Supported by a GUI camera file editing utility (CamEd), the Neon can acquire fixed or variable size images and features a programmable ROI (Region Of Interest) sub-windowing capability. The board provides a full set of camera control signals (CC1, CC2, CC3, CC4) and sync inputs (LVAL, FVAL, PCLK, trigger and encoder) for total camera and acquisition control. These signals are completely independent, although there are provision for driving all cameras from a signal set up encoder/trigger signals. There is also a large number of programmable general purpose outputs and inputs that are not tied to the camera's timing. The Neon-CLB board, as with our past interface products, supports not only simple triggering modes but also complicated, application-specific triggering and control interactions with your hardware environment.

NEO-PCE-CLD

Two CL base camera
Supports both PoCL and non-PoCL cameras
PoCL with Safe Power
x4 PCI Express

SDK 5.30 or later required

Neon-CLD
The Neon family is growing. It started with the Neon-CLB, the world's first PoCL frame grabber that provided Base Camera Link acquisition on an OEM priced platform. Now comes the Neon-CLD which supports two cameras on the same low cost x4 PCIe platform. Both cameras can be completely independent with different resolutions, frame rates, triggering modes, etc. Or both cameras can be perfectly synchronized. The Neon-CLD is incredibly flexible and powerful, yet it can substantially lower your system cost. Not only is the Neon-CLD very aggressively priced, but there are additional savings from connecting two cameras to one frame grabber.

Adding the Neon-CLD to your application is simple with our SDK, which supports both 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems. Develop your application using our sophisticated buffer management APIs, or download our free drivers, available for most 3rd party machine vision packages. The Neon-CLD is software compatible with the single camera Neon-CLB, thus making the number of cameras in a system a manufacturing time decision.

If you need the simplest, most reliable, and best performing dual Base Camera Link/PoCL frame grabber, call BitFlow today to get our Neon-CLD, BitFlow's 4th generation of robust, industrial CL imaging products.

Supports two Base CL cameras
Provides Power over Camera Link (PoCL) for both cameras
Support both PoCL and non-PoCL cameras
Provides Safe Power - full protection from all CL power line faults
Both cameras can be independent of synchronized
Separate I/O for each camera
The Neon-CLD appears to Windows as two separate frame grabbers
Fully backwards compatible with non-PoCL cameras and cables
Half-Size x4 PCI Express Board
Acquire up to 24 bits at 85 MHz
FlowThru technology means that no on-board memory is needed
Sustained DMA rates up to 350 MB/S for each camera (700 MB/S total)
Supports images up to 256K x 128K
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 XP/2003/Vista/Windows 7
Supported on both 32-bit and 64-bit platforms
Drivers for most 3rd party processing environments
Acquire variable length frames with line scan cameras
Acquire image sequences well beyond the 4GB barrier
RoHS compliant

Power over Camera Link
Power over Camera Link (PoCL) is an extension of the Camera Link specification that allows for frame grabbers to provide power to small cameras over the Camera Link cable. PoCL provides many advantages to the OEM. First, the cabling is vastly simplified as only a single cable is required for data, power and control to the camera. This provides all the convenience of Firewire or USB cables schemes with the addition of industrial cabling and much higher data rates. Another advantage is that, because only a single cable is required, the camera footprint can be greatly reduced. For the first time, the so called "dice camera" format factor is supported by an industrial, digital interconnect.

PoCL Safe Power
The baseline PoCL specification only outlines the basic requirement of the frame grabber providing power to the camera. However, with out some protection, there are many situations that can occur where the frame grabber can be damaged and/or the PC the board is installed in. To overcome these problems, and ancillary provision was added to the PoCL standard called "Safe Power". The Safe Power specification takes into account every possible situation that might occur on the CL power lines, and protects the frame grabber and the PC. Safe Power also provides a path for backwards compatiblity for non-PoCL cameras and non-PoCL cables. Because the risks are so great, it doesn't even make sense to buy a PoCL frame grabber unless it supports Safe Power.

FlowThru Architecture
Since 1996 years, BitFlow's camera interface products have been built around our revolutionary FlowThru architecture. Comprised of a user-programmable Video Pipeline, a flexible Camera Control Unit, efficient high-speed video FIFOs and a highly-optimized scatter/gather DMA engine, the FlowThru architecture allows the Neon-CLD to control, acquire, reformat and transfer video data directly into the user's application at camera speeds with zero latency or CPU usage. Our FlowThru architecture has been continuously optimized and enhanced to support a wide variety of imaging applications such as document/package processing, semiconductor, continuous web inspection, sequence capture and motion analysis and can easily be adapted to the specific needs of your application.

Software Support
The Neon-CLD is supported by the BitFlow Software Development Kit (SDK), which is available for both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows platforms. The SDK is board family generic, and will work with all of BitFlow's frame grabbers (making future migration to other families trivial). The kit provides drivers, DLLs and configuration utilities for people interested in using third party software. For customers interested in developing their own applications, the SDK provides header files, libraries and huge amounts of example code. The SDK provides a wide range of Application Programming Interfaces (API), from low-level direct hardware access, to high-level automatic buffer management (ring or sequence). Every line of code has been engineered for reliability under the toughest industrial conditions. At the same time, a priority has been put on ease of use and short development times. With the BitFlow SDK, you'll have the Neon-CLD integrated with your application in no time.

PCI Express Interface
The Neon-CLD uses a x4 PCI Express bus interface. The PCI Express bus offers huge increases in DMA performance over the PCI bus. However, what is less well known is that the PCI Express bus is always peer to peer. This means the the Karbon-CL does not share the bus with any other devices. In most motherboard architectures, it will talk directly to the PCI chipset that is on the memory bus. This direct connection equates to higher sustained DMA bandwidths regardless of system load. Also, most motherboards support concurrent full DMA speed on all of their PCI Express slots. The board will work in any slot that it fits in. This means not only x16, x8 and x4 slots, but also, as is becoming the trend, x1 slots that use x4 (or larger) connectors. Performance will be degraded in an x1 slot, but the board will work fine in applications that don't require maximum data rate.

Camera Control and I/O
Supported by a GUI camera file editing utility (CamEd), the Neon can acquire fixed or variable size images and features a programmable ROI (Region Of Interest) sub-windowing capability. The board provides a full set of camera control signals (CC1, CC2, CC3, CC4) and sync inputs (LVAL, FVAL, PCLK, trigger and encoder) for total camera and acquisition control. These signals are completely independent, although there are provision for driving all cameras from a signal set up encoder/trigger signals. There is also a large number of programmable general purpose outputs and inputs that are not tied to the camera's timing. The Neon-CLD board, as with our past interface products, supports not only simple triggering modes but also complicated, application-specific triggering and control interactions with your hardware environment.

NEO-PCE-CLQ

Four CL base camera
Supports both PoCL and non-PoCL cameras
PoCL with Safe Power
x4 PCI Express

SDK 5.40 or later required

Neon-CLQ
The Neon family has grown again. It started with the Neon-CLB, the world's first PoCL frame grabber that provided Base Camera Link acquisition on an OEM priced platform. Next came the Neon-CLD which supports two cameras on the same low cost x4 PCIe platform. The newest member, the Neon-CLQ, supports capture from four cameras simultaneously. All cameras can be run independently with different resolutions, frame rates, triggering modes, etc. Or all cameras can be perfectly synchronized. The Neon-CLQ is incredibly flexible and powerful, yet it can substantially lower your system cost. The Neon-CLQ on requires a single PCIe slot, you provides interfaces for four camera plus I/O. This means the the Neon-CLQ provides the highest density of cameras per slot of any frame grabber on the market, while bringing the cost per camera down to unprecedented lows. At this price per per camera, the Neon-CLQ can compete with main stream network cameras, while still providing all the robust industrial features expected when using a frame grabber.

Adding the Neon-CLQ to your application is simple with our SDK, which supports both 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems. Develop your application using our sophisticated buffer management APIs, or download our free drivers, available for most 3rd party machine vision packages. The Neon-CLQ is software compatible with the single camera Neon-CLB, thus making the number of cameras in a system a manufacturing time decision.

If you need the simplest, most reliable, and best performing quad Base Camera Link/PoCL frame grabber, call BitFlow today to get our Neon-CLQ, BitFlow's 4th generation of robust, industrial CL imaging products.

Supports four Base CL cameras
Provides Power over Camera Link (PoCL) for all cameras
Support both PoCL and non-PoCL cameras
Provides Safe Power - full protection from all CL power line faults
All cameras can be independently synchronized
Separate I/O for each camera
Support simultaneous serial communications to all four camera
The Neon-CLQ appears to Windows as four separate frame grabbers
Fully backwards compatible with non-PoCL cameras and cables
Half-Size x4 PCI Express Board
Acquire up to 24 bits at 85 MHz
FlowThru technology means that no on-board memory is needed
Supports images up to 256K x 128K
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 XP/2003/Vista/Windows 7
Supported on both 32-bit and 64-bit platforms
Drivers for most 3rd party processing environments
Acquire variable length frames with line scan cameras
Acquire image sequences well beyond the 4GB barrier
RoHS compliant

Power over Camera Link
Power over Camera Link (PoCL) is an extension of the Camera Link specification that allows for frame grabbers to provide power to small cameras over the Camera Link cable. PoCL provides many advantages to the OEM. First, the cabling is vastly simplified as only a single cable is required for data, power and control to the camera. This provides all the convenience of Firewire or USB cables schemes with the addition of industrial cabling and much higher data rates. Another advantage is that, because only a single cable is required, the camera footprint can be greatly reduced. For the first time, the so called "dice camera" format factor is supported by an industrial, digital interconnect.

PoCL Safe Power
The baseline PoCL specification only outlines the basic requirement of the frame grabber providing power to the camera. However, with out some protection, there are many situations that can occur where the frame grabber can be damaged and/or the PC the board is installed in. To overcome these problems, and ancillary provision was added to the PoCL standard called "Safe Power". The Safe Power specification takes into account every possible situation that might occur on the CL power lines, and protects the frame grabber and the PC. Safe Power also provides a path for backwards compatiblity for non-PoCL cameras and non-PoCL cables. Because the risks are so great, it doesn't even make sense to buy a PoCL frame grabber unless it supports Safe Power.

FlowThru Architecture
Since 1996 years, BitFlow's camera interface products have been built around our revolutionary FlowThru architecture. Comprised of a user-programmable Video Pipeline, a flexible Camera Control Unit, efficient high-speed video FIFOs and a highly-optimized scatter/gather DMA engine, the FlowThru architecture allows the Neon-CLQ to control, acquire, reformat and transfer video data directly into the user's application at camera speeds with zero latency or CPU usage. Our FlowThru architecture has been continuously optimized and enhanced to support a wide variety of imaging applications such as document/package processing, semiconductor, continuous web inspection, sequence capture and motion analysis and can easily be adapted to the specific needs of your application.

Software Support
The Neon-CLQ is supported by the BitFlow Software Development Kit (SDK), which is available for both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows platforms. The SDK is board family generic, and will work with all of BitFlow's frame grabbers (making future migration to other families trivial). The kit provides drivers, DLLs and configuration utilities for people interested in using third party software. For customers interested in developing their own applications, the SDK provides header files, libraries and huge amounts of example code. The SDK provides a wide range of Application Programming Interfaces (API), from low-level direct hardware access, to high-level automatic buffer management (ring or sequence). Every line of code has been engineered for reliability under the toughest industrial conditions. At the same time, a priority has been put on ease of use and short development times. With the BitFlow SDK, you'll have the Neon-CLQ integrated with your application in no time.

PCI Express Interface
The Neon-CLQ uses a x4 PCI Express bus interface. The PCI Express bus offers huge increases in DMA performance over the PCI bus. However, what is less well known is that the PCI Express bus is always peer to peer. This means the the Karbon-CL does not share the bus with any other devices. In most motherboard architectures, it will talk directly to the PCI chipset that is on the memory bus. This direct connection equates to higher sustained DMA bandwidths regardless of system load. Also, most motherboards support concurrent full DMA speed on all of their PCI Express slots. The board will work in any slot that it fits in. This means not only x16, x8 and x4 slots, but also, as is becoming the trend, x1 slots that use x4 (or larger) connectors. Performance will be degraded in an x1 slot, but the board will work fine in applications that don't require maximum data rate.

Camera Control and I/O
Supported by a GUI camera file editing utility (CamEd), the Neon can acquire fixed or variable size images and features a programmable ROI (Region Of Interest) sub-windowing capability. The board provides a full set of camera control signals (CC1, CC2, CC3, CC4) and sync inputs (LVAL, FVAL, PCLK, trigger and encoder) for total camera and acquisition control. These signals are completely independent, although there are provision for driving all cameras from a signal set up encoder/trigger signals. There is also a large number of programmable general purpose outputs and inputs that are not tied to the camera's timing. The Neon-CLQ board, as with our past interface products, supports not only simple triggering modes but also complicated, application-specific triggering and control interactions with your hardware environment.

R3-PCI-CL23-L

R3 universal PCI Base Camera Link
One tap cameras up to 24 bits
Two tap (odd/even line) cameras up to 12 bits
16-in/16-out LUT

R3-PCI-CL23

R3 universal PCI Base Camera Link
One tap cameras up to 24 bits
Two tap (odd/even line) cameras up to 12 bits

R3-PCI-CL13-L

R3 universal PCI Base Camera Link
One tap cameras up to 24 bits
Two tap (odd/even pixel) cameras up to 12 bits
16-in/16-out LUT

R3-PCI-CL13

R3 universal PCI Base Camera Link
One tap cameras up to 24 bits
Two tap (odd/even pixel) cameras up to 12 bits

R3-CL
The R3 frame grabber family has been designed to simplify the task of interfacing today's Camera Link cameras to a wide array of imaging applications. The R3-CL can acquire from almost every Base CL camera manufactured. Combining the power of a proven, sophisticated acquisition/DMA engine with a flexible camera interface and control architecture, the R3-CL is our most affordable Camera Link interface and is an excellent choice for end-users, system integrators and OEMs.

The R3-CL is the second generation of BitFlow frame grabbers that uses our FlowThru technology. The principle here is to do away with the frame buffer that traditional frame grabbers are built around, and instead optimize the data path so that the images flow through the board and into the host's memory with no latency and zero CPU usage. The only on-board storage is a FIFO to handle the asynchronous nature of the PCI bus. Finally, the entire system is interrupt based, so modern, multi-threaded, applications need not waste processing resources on controlling acquisition.

Half-size, 32-bit/33MHz PCI 2.2 compliant card
Supports both 5 V and 3.3 V PCI slots
Base Camera Link interface for a single area or line scan camera with 1, 2 or 3 channels of up to 24, 12 or 8 bits per channel respectively
Flow-Thru architecture featuring a Scatter/Gather DMA engine that supports the direct transfer of data to memory in real-time
Acquires image sizes up to 512K pixels by 32K lines (vertical size is unlimited for line scan cameras)
Efficient packing of 24-bit pixels
On-the-fly reformatting for multi-channel cameras
11 user-programmable I/O signals (4 in/7 out)
Up to 50MHz acquisition
Optional 16-bit in/16-bit out LUT
Serial port communications
Version 1.1 compliant serial DLL
Drivers and DLLs for Windows NT, 2000, XP and Server 2003
Supported by BitFlow SDK 3.00 or higher

Camera Link Interface
The R3-CL features a single Camera Link camera interface configuration. The R3-CL can acquire from any base camera, which allows for up to 24 bit pixels in single tap mode, or 12-bit pixels in two tap mode.

Applications
The flexibility of the R3-CL product allows it to be used in virtually any imaging application that requires a Camera Link camera and utilizes the power, scalability and cost-effectiveness of the desktop computer for processing.

R3-PCI-DIF-L

R3 universal PCI digital camera interface
Two internal channels
Scan reversal
32-bit input
LVDS/EIA-644 and RS-422 compatibility
Up to 40MHz acquisition
16-in/16-out LUT

R3-PCI-DIF

R3 universal PCI digital camera interface
Two internal channels
Scan reversal
32-bit input
LVDS/EIA-644 and RS-422compatibility
Up to 40MHz acquisition

R3-DIF
The R3 frame grabber family has been designed to simplify the task of interfacing today's digital cameras to a wide array of imaging applications. The R3-DIF can interface to almost every LVDS camera manufactured (up to 32 bits). Combining the power of a proven, sophisticated acquisition/DMA engine with a flexible camera interface and control architecture, our newest product is an excellent choice for end-users, system integrators and OEMs.

The R3-Dif is the second generation of BitFlow frame grabbers that uses our FlowThru technology. The principle here is to do away with the frame buffer that traditional frame grabbers are built around, and instead optimize the data path so that the images flow through the board and into the host's memory with no latency and zero CPU usage. The only on-board storage is a FIFO to handle the asynchronous nature of the PCI bus. Finally, the entire system is interrupt based, so modern, multi-threaded, applications need not waste processing resources on controlling acquisition.

Half-size, 32-bit/33MHz PCI 2.2 compliant card
Supports both 5 V and 3.3 V PCI slots
Flow-Thru architecture featuring a Scatter/Gather DMA engine that supports the direct transfer of data to memory in real-time with no latency or CPU usage
Acquires image sizes up to 512K by 32K pixels (vertical size is unlimited for line scan cameras)
LVDS/RS422 (32-bit) area or line scan camera interface supporting a single camera with up to four 8-bit channels, two synchronized cameras or two multiplexed asynchronous cameras
9 user-programmable I/O signals (4 in/5 out)
Multiple trigger modes
Up to 40MHz acquisition for LVDS and 30MHz for RS-422 (contact us for higher clock rates)
On-the-fly reformatting for multi-tap cameras
Optional 16-bit in/16-bit out LUT
Cables and configuration files for more than 200 industrial cameras
Drivers and DLLs for Windows NT, 2000, XP and Server 2003
Supported by BitFlow SDK 3.00 or higher

Applications
The flexibility of the R3-DIF product allows it to be used in virtually any imaging application that requires a digital camera or data source and utilizes the power, scalability and cost-effectiveness of the desktop computer for processing. The R3-DIF can also be programmed to DMA directly to other PCI devices such as an embedded processor or high-speed storage peripheral.

R3-PMC-CL23-L

R3 universal PCI Mezzanine Card Base Camera Link
One tap cameras up to 24 bits
Two tap (odd/even line) cameras up to 12 bits
16-in/16-out LUT

R3-PMC-CL23

R3 universal PCI Mezzanine Card Base Camera Link
One tap cameras up to 24 bits
Two tap (odd/even line) cameras up to 12 bits

R3-PMC-CL13-L

R3 universal PCI Mezzanine Card Base Camera Link
One tap cameras up to 24 bits
Two tap (odd/even pixel) cameras up to 12 bits 16-in/16-out LUT

R3-PMC-CL13

R3 universal PCI Mezzanine Card Base Camera Link
One tap cameras up to 24 bits
Two tap (odd/even pixel) cameras up to 12 bits

R3-CL-PMC
The R3 frame grabber family has been designed to simplify the task of interfacing today's Camera Link cameras to a wide array of imaging applications. The R3-CL-PMC can acquire from almost every Base CL camera manufactured. The addition of a PCI Mezzanine Card (PMC) version of the R3-CL adds even more flexibility to our product by allowing embedded application developers to take advantage of a proven camera interface product by installing this board onto an array processor or single-board computer.

The R3-CL family is the second generation of BitFlow frame grabbers that uses our FlowThru technology. The principle here is to do away with the frame buffer that traditional frame grabbers are built around, and instead optimize the data path so that the images flow through the board and into the host's memory with no latency and zero CPU usage. The only on-board storage is a FIFO to handle the asynchronous nature of the PCI bus. Finally, the entire system is interrupt based, so modern, multi-threaded, applications need not waste processing resources on controlling acquisition.

32-bit/33MHz PCI 2.2 compliant card
Single-size, PCI Mezzanine Card (PMC) interface board supporting both 5 V and 3.3 V PCI configurations
Base Camera Link interface for a single area or line scan camera with 1, 2 or 3 channels of up to 24, 12 or 8 bits per channel respectively
Flow-Thru architecture featuring a Scatter/Gather DMA engine that supports the direct transfer of data to memory in real-time
Acquires image sizes up to 512K pixels by 32K lines (vertical size is unlimited for line scan cameras)
Efficient packing of 24-bit pixels
On-the-fly reformatting for multi-channel cameras
11 user-programmable I/O signals (4 in/7 out)
Up to 50MHz acquisition
Optional 16-bit in/16-bit out LUT
Serial port communications
Version 1.1 compliant serial DLL
Drivers and DLLs for Windows NT, 2000, XP and Server 2003
Supported by BitFlow SDK 3.00 or higher

Camera Link Interface
The R3-CL-PMC features a single Camera Link camera interface configuration. The R3-CL can acquire from any base camera, which allows for up to 24 bit pixels in single tap mode, or 12-bit pixels in two tap mode.

Applications
The flexibility of the R3-CL product allows it to be used in virtually any imaging application that requires a Camera Link camera and utilizes the power, scalability and cost-effectiveness of the desktop computer for processing.

RUN-PCI-44/44-M

Four internal channels
Scan reversal
32-bit input
8-bit in/12-bit out LUT
Up to 40 MHz pixel clock

RUN-PCI-24/24-M

Two internal channels
Scan reversal
32-bit input
8-bit in/12-bit out LUT
Up to 40 MHz pixel clock

RUN-PCI-14/14-M

One internal channels
32-bit input
8-bit in/12-bit out LUT
Up to 40 MHz pixel clock RUN-PCI-12 / 12-M
One internal channel
16-bit input
8-bit in/12-bit out LUT
Up to 40 MHz pixel clock

RUN-PCI-12/12-M

One internal channel
16-bit input
8-bit in/12-bit out LUT
Up to 40 MHz pixel clock

RUN-PCI-11/11-M

One internal channel
8-bit input
8-bit in/12-bit out LUT
Up to 40 MHz pixel clock

Road Runner Differential Camera Interface
BitFlow designed the Road Runner from the ground up to support demanding digital imaging applications. Since it's initial development, the Road Runner has been designed into 100s of successful applications and continues to solve the most demanding interface and application requirements.

32-bit/33MHz bus master PCI bus interface board
Flow-Thru architecture featuring a Scatter/Gather DMA engine that supports the direct transfer of data to VGA or system memory in real-time with no latency or CPU usage
Acquires image sizes up to 512K by 32K pixels (vertical size is unlimited for line scan cameras)
LVDS/RS422 (32-bit) area or line scan camera interface supporting a single camera with up to 4 8-bit channels, two synchronized cameras or two multiplexed asynchronous cameras (model dependent)
9 user-programmable I/O signals (4 inputs and 5 outputs)
Multiple trigger modes
Up to 40MHz acquisition for LVDS and 30MHz for RS-422 (contact us for higher clock rates)
On-the-fly reformatting for multi-tap cameras
Standard 8-bit in/12-bit out LUT
Optional 16-bit in/16-bit out LUT available
Cables and configuration files for more than 200 industrial cameras
Drivers and DLLs for Windows NT, 2000 and XP
Supported by all versions of the BitFlow SDK

Applications
The flexibility of the Road Runner product allows it to be used in virtually any imaging application that requires a digital camera or data source and utilizes the power, scalability and cost-effectiveness of the desktop computer for processing. The Road Runner can also be programmed to DMA directly to other PCI devices such as an embedded processor or high-speed storage peripheral.

SDK Version 5.40

BitFlow Software Development Kit
Supporting our Alta, Neon, Karbon, R64, R64e, R3, Road Runner products, BitFlow's Software Development Kit (SDK) allows imaging application developers to take full advantage of the host computer's capabilities. Development libraries provide hardware access and display functions. Working example applications, complete with MS Visual C++ source code, enable developers to quickly demonstrate BitFlow's products and subsequently integrate them into their applications. The SDK supports the robust multitasking and multiprocessing performance benefits of Windows XP/2003/2008/Vista/Windows 7. The Common Camera Interface Library (Ci) allows for seamless integration with all of BitFlow's products. In addition, the high level Buffer management library (BufIn) makes the task of writing an asynchronous, multiple host buffer application trivial. There are two version of the SDK, the full version and the drivers only version.

Windows XP/2003/2008/Vista/Windows 7 drivers and DLLs
Asynchronous, interrupt-driven, multitasking, multi-threaded operation
C/C++/C# 32-bit interface for 32-bit version of Windows
C/C++/C# 64-bit interface for 64-bit version of Windows
Acquisition event (e.g. end of frame, end of DMA, loss of sync) notification via a non-polling interrupt signals
High-level API supports complete setup and acquisition with less than 10 function calls; Low level API supports total control of the camera interface and includes sophisticated line rate and exposure time control
Very low latency DMA reset code, allows for tight spacing of continuous variable-size imaging targets
Complete API error tracking system, with all error message destinations under full program control
Support for building DMA chains of host buffers that are automatically filled during acquisition
Full observability of the board's current state: line number, maximum line number (for variable size images), acquisition state, trigger status, etc.
Camera configuration and test utilities
Example applications with source code for viewing, processing, buffer management and sequence acquisition
Extensive built-in diagnostics to assist during support incidents

Example Applications

BiFlow - Sequence capture application using our new BufIn API
Circ - Circular buffer management application
BayView - Bayer Filter Color viewing application
R2/Rv/R2CL/R64/Ci/BiSimple - console based applications
CiView - Real-time display application*
BiProces - Real-time processing application
SysReg - System configuration utility*
CamVert - Camera configuration file editor
CamEd - Interactive Camera configuration file editor*
CiBench - tests PCI DMA throughput capabilities of the host computer*
BFCom - HyperTerminal-like application allowing direct access to a Camera Link camera through the board's serial port

* Indicates applications included in driver-only installations. The remaining applications are available through the one-time purchase of our SDK.

API Layers
The BitFlow API is broken into tiers. User application can access any tier, higher levels offer more functionality with fewer calls, lower levels offer custom control of the board.

Buffer Interface (BufIn): Supports high-level buffer management.(more info)
Camera Interface level (Ci): Gives applications a common view of the Alta, Neon, Karbon, R64, R3 and Road Runner and therefore access to all of the supported analog, digital and Camera Link cameras. Allows the user to control multiple frame grabbers boards simultaneously.
Low-level interface: Provides the most direct access to board control and status registers and memory. This level fully exposes the boards architecture to the user, something not available in many competing products.

SDK Support
The BitFlow SDK supports Windows 2000/Windows XP/2003/2008/Vista/Windows 7 on Intel-compatible PC platforms. All BitFlow libraries are native, 32-bit/64-bit implementations directly supported by Microsoft Visual C++ or Visual Studio 2005/2008. However they are are callable from Win32-compliant programming language or application. Contact BitFlow for additional operating systems support.

Drivers are available for off-the-shelf image processing packages such as A&B Software's ImageWarp, MVTec's HALCON, Cognex's VisionPro and AIK, Stemmer Imaging's Common Vision Blox, Media Cybernetics' Image Pro PlusTM, National Instrument's LabView and IO Industries' Video Savant.