Sony digital IEEE 1394 camera family extended to include raw colour models for high speed industrialapplications

Citation

(2004), "Sony digital IEEE 1394 camera family extended to include raw colour models for high speed industrialapplications", Sensor Review, Vol. 24 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/sr.2004.08724caf.005

Sony digital IEEE 1394 camera family extended to include raw colour models for high speed industrialapplications

Sony digital IEEE 1394 camera family extended to include raw colour models for high speed industrialap

Fastest achievable colour camera on a 400 Mbps bus

Sony Europe's Image Sensing Solutions division, one of the pioneers in IEEE 1394 technology, has announced two new additions to its range of progressive scan digital machine vision cameras, the XCD-SX910CR and XCD-X710CR (Plate 5). Both models offer raw colour output for enhanced colour fidelity, allowing customers to apply their proprietary colour conversion routines. With their superior frame rates and excellent resolution the cameras can improve throughput and increase productivity in high speed machine vision applications such as sorting/inspection in the food, textile, printing and medical/ pharmaceutical industries, and in quality critical production lines.

Plate 5 The XCD-SX910CR and XCD-X710CR are the first digital cameras from Sony to offer raw colour output

The XCD-SX910CR and XCD-X710CR are the first digital cameras from Sony to offer raw colour output. The new colour raw (CR) cameras deliver the raw luminance of each R, G, and B pixel, providing enhanced colour fidelity. In some applications it is preferable that the colour output is from a known reference and that the colour processing takes place outside the camera at the computer level. These units use a CCD with a Bayer RGB colour mask filter and output raw pixel values as Mono-8 (8-bits per pixel) in 8-bit mode or Mono-16 (16 bits per pixel) in 10-bit mode. The colour conversion in the computer is supported by Sony's IEEE 1394 driver and most 3rd party IEEE 1394 (Firewire) compatible software.

The XCD-SX910CR is based on a 1/2 in. type interline transfer (IT) progressive scan 1,450,000 pixel CCD for SXGA resolution (1,280 × 960) at up to 15 frames/s. The XCD-X710CR is a 1/3 in. type IT progressive scan 800,000 pixel CCD camera offering XGA resolution. Both models feature plug-and-play IEEE 1394 interfaces with a new firmware implementation that provides compliance to version 1.3 of the standard. The XCD-X710CR has been optimised to use the IEEE 1394 bus at its best to provide the fastest colour camera possible on a 400 Mbps bus – 30 fps at up to 1,024 × 768 resolution in 8-bit mode.

An assortment of convenient features such as partial scan (256 zones at 16 × 16) to get increased frame rates and selectable output modes (frame rate/bit depth) make these cameras extremely flexible. The XCD-SX910 and XCD-X710 operate from an 8-30 V DC supply with a power consumption of 3 W. The cameras are housed in compact, rugged steel cases measuring 44(W) × 33(H) × 116(D)mm and each weighs 250 g.