Full-Configuration Camera Link
Image Acquisition
NI PCIe-1429
• Image acquisition for base,
medium, and full-configuration
Camera Link cameras
• Four-lane (x4) PCI Express interface
• Standard Camera Link cabling
• Acquires at the maximum Camera
Link rate of 680 MB/s
• Optional digital I/O expansion card
for extra triggering and isolation
NEW
Operating Systems
• Windows 2000/NT/XP
Recommended Software
• LabVIEW
• Vision Development Module,
or Vision Builder for
Automated Inspection
Driver Software (included)
• NI-IMAQ 3.1
Overview
The National Instruments PCIe-1429 is the industry’s first
PCI Express image acquisition board. With the NI PCIe-1429, you now
can acquire images at the highest speeds, resolutions, and bit depths
available for Camera Link cameras to perform demanding imaging
applications such as synchronized data and image acquisition, fault
analysis, and advanced motion tracking.
In the past, acquiring images at high data rates required devices with
banks of expensive onboard memory that could acquire images only
for short periods of time, or specialized buses such as the PCI 64/66 or
PCI-X, for which standard PC chipsets are not available. With Intel’s
standardization on PCI Express and the NI PCIe-1429 board, you now
can acquire at high data rates indefinitely through a standard PC bus.
Camera Link comes in three configurations – base, medium, and
full. The base configuration uses three 8-bit taps, or input channels, to
acquire up to 24 bits of data at a rate of 340 MB/s. The full
configuration offers eight taps and can acquire images up to 680 MB/s.
Digital I/O
Each NI PCIe-1429 image acquisition board includes one trigger line and
two Camera Link connectors to work with any base, medium or full-
configuration Camera Link camera. Additional I/O lines for advanced
triggering, pulse-train outputs and isolated DIO also are available with
the IMAQ-1000 expansion board. With the four-lane PCI Express
configuration of the NI PCIe-1429, engineers and scientists can acquire
at the full Camera Link bandwidth of 680 MB/s. In addition, they can
synchronize other data acquisition measurements with each acquired
image to analyze activities frame by frame in data-intensive applications
such as crash tests.
Camera Link
Camera Link is an industrial high-speed serial data and cabling
standard developed by National Instruments, camera vendors, and
other image acquisition companies. Created for easy connectivity
between the PC and the camera, Camera Link provides simple, flexible
cabling for high-speed, high-resolution digital cameras. A Camera Link
cable is a slender 26-pin cable with 24-bit data, clock, and enable as well
as control signals. You can control camera functionality by
asynchronous serial control or LVDS differential lines through a
Camera Link cable.
Figure 1. Images Acquired at 1,000 Frames/s with a Basler A504 High-Speed Camera.
NI [ NATIONAL INSTRUMENTS CORPORATION ]
