Benefits at a glance:

• Small size, low weight, power, and costs enable you to build SWaP+C solutions:
  • Bare-board very compact system designs
  • Low power consumption <2W ideal for battery powered system
• Innovative digital InGaAs sensors with the industry’ smallest pixels and a high-precision sensor alignment at  production time provide you great image quality, which will increase the accuracy of your inspection system
• High frame rates and flexible ROI control options empower you to speed up processes on-demand
• On-board Automatic Gain Control (AGC) and Contrast Control will enhance your vision quality under challenging conditions, like: 24h day & night imaging or when seeing through dust or haze
• A wide operating temperature range and on-board temperature monitoring secure you a reliable operation under diverse conditions

Machine vision goes embedded with the new Alvium 1800 SWIR camera models with Sony SenSWIR sensor technology

Smallest industrial grade low-power uncooled short-wave infrared (SWIR) core modules on the market ideally suitable to build compact OEM systems used in embedded and machine vision applications.

ALVIUM^® is a powerful, energy-efficient processor including an Image Signal Processor (ISP) and an Image Processing Library (IPL). It allows image corrections and pre-processing on the camera to optimize image quality and throughput for your application while offloading your CPUs on the embedded system.

The new Alvium models in detail

Available with either USB3 Vision or MIPI CSI-2 interface with GenIcam compliant feature control,  industrial grade hardware, and drivers, Alvium SWIR core modules provide a plug & play feeling whenever setting up a machine vision applications beyond the visible, regardless if it’s based on a PC or an embedded system.

Precise image acquisition via triggering function and flexible frame rate control

Many MIPI CSI-2 sensor modules can only stream images and don’t allow the precise image acquisition timing needed in industrial applications. Allied Vision’s Alvium 1800 C series features for the Nvidia Jetson systems advanced triggering functions that machine vision system engineers had been missing in embedded vision:

• Hardware trigger for lowest latency
• Software trigger

Furthermore, the Alvium 1800 CSI-2 cameras now support flexible frame rate control. This allows the user to set a fixed frame rate for the cameras according to his needs.

The triggering function and the frame rate control are available as custom controls in the Video4Linux2 (V4L2) framework or directly in the camera via Direct Register Access (DRA).

Improvements with SenSWIR sensor technology by Sony

• Visible spectral range extension (400nm – 1700nm)
  Sony SenSWIR InGaAs sensors are designed with a very thin Indium Phosphide (InP) layer enabling visible light to pass through to the sensitive InGaAs layer. There are already InGaAs sensors available on the market with visible light extension, but Sony is the first manufacturer who managed to keep the quantum efficiency over the full spectral range at a relative high level (>50%). In some applications (e.g. spectral imaging, surveillance) this can help to reduce system costs as only a single camera needs to be used.
• Higher inspection precision (5µm pixel pitch)
  By using Copper-to-Copper connections between the indium-gallium-arsenide (InGaAs) photodiode layer and the silicon readout circuit layer instead of Indium bumps, much smaller pixel sizes of only 5µm² can be realized. This enables imaging with high spatial resolution to reveal smaller object details.
• High image homogeneity
  Sony SenSWIR sensors are the first sensors we have integrated into the Goldeye camera series with digital outputs. Previous analog sensors require external ADCs resulting in the typical visible vertical striped that are corrected by our NUC. ​​​​​​
  In addition, the high image homogeneity of Sony SenSWIR sensors is supported by the Copper-to-Copper connections, that Sony is using in their stacked design, to connect the InGaAs layer with the Silicon Readout IC. They ensure a much more reliable and uniform connection between the two layers vs. existing solutions using Indium bumps.
• Eased filter integration
  Sony SenSWIR sensors are comparatively small. Even the SXGA sensor has only a size of 1/2”. Therefore, the F- and M42- Mount options of the Goldeye’s modular concept are most-likely not relevant, so we decided to change the mount concept for the G-130 and G-030 to be the same concept as the Prosilica GT. This enables the user to screw in standard C-mount filters easily and reduces overall costs.