- Or if a 3rd party application is installed, such as Cognex Vision Pro or LabVIEW, the user can download the latest driver from BitFlow and the program will be immediately supported. BitFlow Axion-xB frame grabbers are complimented by a sophisticated application software package and the BitFlow SDK for Windows and Linux operating systems.
- For more details about these products, visit BitFlow. NorPix is a developer of high-speed digital video capture software specializing in single or multiple camera acquisition.
- Controlling CoaXPress Cameras from The BitFlow SDK Tools, Configuration File and APIs Revision 1.0 Introduction The BitFlow SDK offers a number of different methods for programming and controlling a CoaXPress (CXP) camera connected to a BitFlow CXP frame grabber. While number of workflows might seem con.
BitFlow has been developing industrial frame grabbers and software for the imaging industry since 1993. They specialize in interfacing with cameras with very high data/frame rates; working in environments with complex triggering and I/O requirements; and running in applications where every CPU cycle is precious. Bitflow’s software is some of the easiest to use, yet incredibly powerful and reliable.
BitFlow Camera Link PoCL Frame Grabbers for Industrial and Machine Vision for sale from Aegis Electronic Group - Wholesale Stocking Distributor. Neon-CL and Axion-CL Series Camera Link Interface offers the advantages of real-time/ high speed, easy frame grabber and camera integration, lower cable prices (cost-effective), extremely robust and powerful, and standardization. BitFlow offers a variety of Camera Link frame grabbers to suit your imaging application needs. Neon-CLB Single Base Camera Link w/ PoCL PCIe x4 Slot,.
BitFlow frame grabbers are supported by the following 3rd Party Software packages: A&B Software ImageWarp and ActiveBF, Aqsense SAL3D, Cognex Vision Pro, The Mathworks MATLAB, Media Cybernetics ImagePro, MVTec HALCON, National Instruments Labview, NorPix StreamPix and TroublePix, OpenCV, TWAIN, Stemmer Vision Blox, IO Industries Streams.
Camera Link
Neon-CL
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. Both cameras can be run completely independent (with different resolutions, frame rates, triggering modes, etc.) or perfectly synchronized. The Neon-CLQ is incredibly flexible and powerful, yet it can substantially lower your system cost. Although the Neon-CLQ only requires a single PCIe slot it provides four camera interfaces plus I/O. This means the Neon-CLQ hits 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 camera, the Neon-CLQ can compete with mainstream 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 us today to get our Neon-CLQ, BitFlow's 4th generation of robust, industrial CL imaging products.
Axion-CL
BitFlow's 6th Generation Camera Link Frame Grabbers
BitFlow has been making Camera Link frame grabbers since 1999. With each successive generation of frame grabbers, BitFlow has improved the quality, flexibility, and robustness of their interfaces. Meanwhile, much has changed on the backend; PCI to PCIe, Gen 1 to Gen 2, etc. The Camera Link Specification has also been continuously evolving: 80-bit (10-tap) mode was added, Power over Camera Link (PoCL), new connectors, new tap formats. Even though the specification has been around a long time, it is still one of the simplest, efficient, and least expensive ways to get camera data into a computer. It also benefits from hundreds of thousands of pieces of CL equipment sold worldwide.
BitFlow has been on top of all these changes and has continuously improved and updated their Camera Link frame grabbers. The Axion-CL, the most powerful CL frame grabber BitFlow has ever manufactured, is the culmination of all of these improvements
The Axion-CL also benefits from other products in BitFlow's line up. The Axion-CL uses the Cyton-CXP's backend: the StreamSync DMA engine and buffer manager, as well as a brand new PCIe Gen 2 interface, with DMA optimized for modern (fully loaded, fully busy) computers.
CoaXPress
Aon-CXP
Introducing the Aon
The Aon-CXP is low cost single link CoaXPress frame grabber. While it looks tiny, it has all the power of its big brother, the Cyton. It supports CXP camera speeds up to 6.25 Gb/S. The technology that Machine Vision components are built on are advancing rapidly in performance while size and costs are plummeting. CoaXPress cameras, which traditionally were power hungry, large, and expensive, are now small, cool, and affordable. Single link cameras are coming out that are 29mm cubes. While this sounds tiny, they can still receive 6.25 Gb/S worth of data over the link, almost twice the real world data rate of the USB3 Vision standard and significantly quicker than the latest GigE Vision data rates. This means you can get 2 MP images at 300 FPS! The Aon CXP has been designed for this low cost/high-performance market.
A small foot print single link CXP camera mated with the Aon-CXP can provide all the convenience of a GigE Vision or USB3 Vision camera system. It can compete on price; can exceed the cable lengths in many cases; and can provide a host of Machine Vision features missing from GigE Vision or USB3 Vision camera systems (triggers, encoders, strobe, waveform generators, quadrature encoder support, etc.). Furthermore, because of the Aon's advanced DMA engine, no CPU resources are used in moving images to host memory.
One of the biggest advantages of buying a frame grabber over a GigE Vision or USB3 Vision camera is that all of the hardware and software components of the capture system are sourced from one manufacturer. It is not a bunch of separate blocks from different manufacturers (including Intel and Microsoft). BitFlow wrote every line of software and firmware and designed all their own hardware, which means if you have a problem we can support you. If the problem is on our side, we can fix it ourselves and get you a solution in a short amount of time.
Claxon CXP4
BitFlow Frame Grabber Support From Image Acquisition Toolbox ...
Introducing The Claxon Platform
BitFlow has been shipping CoaXPress frame grabbers since 2012. The standard has not stood still and BitFlow has continued to advance its products. The latest is the Claxon, a quad CXP-12 PCIe Gen 3 frame grabber. CXP-12 is the latest CoaXPress speed jump, now transmitting video at 12. 5 Gb/S. While the speed of data through the frame grabber has doubled, the overall architecture has remained the same as the previous generation Cyton, allowing user to easily migrate to the newer cameras without major software changes.
Cyton-CXP
Introducing CoaXPress
CoaXPress 1.1 (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 6.25 Gigabits/Second (Gb/S). Control commands and triggers can be sent simultaneously to the camera at rates up to 20 Mb/S (with a trigger accuracy of +/- 2 nanoseconds). Up to 13 W of power can also supplied to the camera. All of 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.
BitBox
Introducing the BitBox
The BitBox is BitFlow's new solution for high density I/O applications. Many machine makers require a large number of computer managed I/O signals for continuous control of the system state. This includes controlling devices such as strobes, solenoids, actuators, indicators, switches, encoders, and triggers, as well as gathering inputs from photo-detectors. In general, BitFlow frame grabbers come with a fairly large number of inputs and outputs, but for some systems this is simply not enough. Most customers end up purchasing another device to manage the I/O which adds expense, requires another slot, another driver and SDK, another manual, etc. The BitBox has been designed for just this situation. It is controlled completely from the frame grabber and uses the same API, driver, and manuals as the frame grabber. This saves time, money, and space. It is also straightforward and easy to use.
| Summary: | Interfaces with Andor sCMOS cameras (Use Andor DeviceAdapter instead for other Andor CCD and EMCCD cameras) |
|---|---|
| Author | David Gault (Andor) |
| Maintainers | Alan Mullan (Andor) Niall Flanagan (Andor) |
| Documentation: | Norman Glasgow (Andor, retired) Pariksheet Nanda (Andor) |
| License: | BSD |
| Platforms: | Windows, Linux, (No Mac driver available) |
| Devices: | Neo, Zyla, Sona |
- 1Installation
- 2Configuration
- 4Troubleshooting
- 5Resources
Installation
Andor Driver Pack 3 (sCMOS)
Install the Andor Driver Pack 3 (sCMOS) to the working Micro-Manager Directory e.g.
and ensure you restart the computer.
Documentation: MVTec Software
On a 32-bit Windows OS, the 32-bit DLLs will be installed to a subfolder of the MicroManager directory (e.g. C:Program FilesMicro-Manager-1.4Win32). These DLLs must then be copied to the Micro-Manager Directory (e.g. C:Program FilesMicro-Manager-1.4), replacing the 64-bit DLLs.
Disable computer power savings
Disable C-states power saving in the BIOS. For Windows Vista and later, also disable PCI Express > Link State Power Management in Power Options.
Configuration
Increase Sequence buffer size
It is possible to achieve full frame rate with enough RAM. Again using a 64-bit OS, set this value to 5120 MB
Depending on the amount of RAM on the PC or processing performance, this may need to be adjusted accordingly.
Some operations take longer with larger sequence buffers. Many users will be fine with the Micro-Manager default size, especially with a SSD hard drive. 5120 MB is enough for 1250 full-frame images without writing to disk. As of MM 1.4.19 the default buffer size is 250 MB for 64-bit OS and 25 MB for 32-bit OS.
Linux Installation
The following assumes you installed the Andor SDK in /usr/local/lib/
Put the following line into /etc/udev/rules.d/andor.rules
Add the following lines to /etc/rc.d/rc.local
Reboot the machine.
Usage notes
- Trigger mode is dynamically set by µManager when using Multi-Dimensional > Time points.
- 'exposure' < 'interval' ignores the 'interval' time and instead uses 'frame rate' property from the 'Device/Property Browser'
- 'exposure' > 'interval' sets Software Triggers acquisition.
- Save data to a large storage drive such as 1 TB, 950 MB/sec PCI-e SSD (OCZ-Z drive R2 P-88) or 4x Kingston 256GB SSD (RAID 0) on LSI MegaRAID setup
Troubleshooting
Zyla support in Micro-Manager
Please read the section on High Speed Acquisition in Micro-Manager. The minimum version of Micro-Manager required is 1.4.11 (Nov 8th, 2012), but 1.4.16 or later is strongly recommended.Consider trying the latest nightly build from here.
DeviceCreate function failed
This error appears in the hardware wizard if the Andor camera SDK has been installed, but the computer has not been restarted.
Download Bitflow Cameras App
Error: Circular buffer overflowed.
If one encounters this error, increase sequence buffer size. In the µManager toolbar one can set the Sequence buffer size in the main menu:
Reason:Due to the rate that the camera acquires data it's not uncommon for µManager to run out of 'Circular Buffer' memory during sequence acquisitions (50+ images). The circular buffer is where images wait when they've been taken off the camera but have not yet been processed by µManager. The error message is:
BitFlow SDK 6.30
Restart uManager for this change to take effect.
Error: Internal inconsistency: unknown system exception occurred
If you see this message when snapping an image, try a lower AcquisitionWindow size (the default is the full Full Image) to confirm that the camera is capable of sending an image. The BitFlow frame grabber PCIe card fits in 4x splots, but some motherboards don't have the bandwidth to run it and the card may need to be instead installed on an 8x or 16x slot.
Resources
See Andor'sSetup Video which details the steps above, shows how to add a device in the property browser, etc.
See Andor's Software Guide which details the steps above, shows how to add a device in the property browser, etc.
Development support
Please liaison with Micro-Manager developers to contact the Andor software team
Andor support
Download Bitflow Cameras Software