Smart camera: Multispectral camera has 5 CCDs

Quest Innovations introduces “Condor” smart camera with 5 CCD channels, allowing parallel image acquisition. See photos.

By Control Engineering Staff October 22, 2008

Middenmeer, The Netherlands — Quest Innovations announced what it characterized as the World’s first scalable 5 CCD multi-spectral smart camera, which, it says, can be tailored to customer needs. The 5 CCD version is the first product in the “Condor” product line, which the company says is a complete line of scalable multi-spectral smart cameras ranging from 2 to 5 sensors, all pixel-to-pixel aligned to view the same object on the same pixels.The company says the camera has customer specified waveband filters and dichroic coatings placed on top of the worlds first 5-channel prism, to allow for parallel acquisition of images. Prism and coatings are designed in close cooperation with the company’s optics partner and supplier, Optec, to have no color aberration and a defined optical path that is exactly the same for all wavelengths.

Waveband filters and 5-channel prism allow parallel acquisition of multispectral images. Source: Quest Innovations

The company also introduced the Condor-MS-5 multi-spectral acquisition system, which it says is built on the scalable smart camera platform and allows on-board processing using parallel software operations on each image band, customizable by the user. The company says system triggering and integration allows for application specific fine tuning of these parameters. An integrated PLC controls all integration and triggering parameters, which can be adjusted by the user via the camera command line interface or delivered software application. All images are transferred to the PC software on which they can be stored, displayed, or read back. The company says the camera is available with different computer interfaces, such as CameraLink, Gigabit Ethernet or Fiber Optic interfaces for long-distance (from 200 m to several kilometers) transfer of data.

Multispectral camera can be custom ordered to fit user needs. Source: Quest Innovations

Further, the company says customers can request additional processors placed inside the camera for imaging operations on the real-time data stream, such as autofocus, auto-iris, image enhancement filtering, black-current correction, look-up-table (LUT) conversion, and compression.See more from Control Engineering on vision systems .— C.G. Masi , senior editor Control Engineering Machine Control eNewsletter Register here and scroll down to select your choice of eNewsletters free.