PicPort®-Pro-CL

PicPort®-Pro-CL is a multiple camera frame grabber supporting the Camera Link standard interface. This high-speed board can be used with both line-scan and area-scan Camera Link compatible cameras. It is suitable for both color and monochrome applications, and supports high-speed and high-resolution. PicPort®-Pro-CL is cost effective, compact and high performance, meeting the demanding requirements of diverse image processing and machine vision applications. It is a member of the LV Camera Link Family of products.

Besides the standard PCI bus version, the PMC module version of the PicPort®-Pro-CL series is also available.

PicPort®-Pro-CL main highlights:

  • standard PCI bus
  • Camera Link cameras
  • up to 2 base or 1 medium/full cameras
  • universal 32/64-bit, 33/66MHz PCI
  • extensive general purpose input/output
  • camera power
  • on-board Real-Time Function support (currently HW Bayer decoder functionality)
  • up to 48MB 1GB/s advanced features frame buffer
  • 2 large hardware LUTs
  • performance/features configuration options
  • LV-SDS and 3rd party software support

 

PicPort-Pro-CL

Architecture

A comprehensive array of on-board features include Camera Link interface for 2 base or 1 medium/full cameras at up to 85 MHz, large LUTs, Bayer color decoder, multi-taps/packed pixel reformatting, color/monochrome format conversion, up to 48MB 1GB/s frame buffer with advanced features and 32/64-bit, 33/66 MHz PCI bus interface with 16 DMA channels. The frame buffer ensures no data loss under varying operating system conditions by virtue of its memory size and its ability to generate interrupts to the user application that flag dynamic image buffer watermark depth thresholds. The individual features vary for different board configurations, see technical specifications for details.

PicPort-Pro-CL, board architecture

PicPort®-Pro-CL architecture is user friendly, em-ploying innovative re-programmable flash memory and FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) technologies. This allows the user to reconfigure the on-board hardware via downloadable software updates. The flash memory can also be used for security coding to prevent unauthorized copying of user application proprietary technology.

Image Acquisition & Conditioning

Camera Link Interfaces

Depending on board model supports 1 or 2 base (3 ¡Ñ 8-bit or 2 ¡Ñ 8/10/12-bit or 1 ¡Ñ 8/10/12/14/16-bit monochrome or 24-bit RGB) or one medium (4 ¡Ñ 8/10/12-bit monochrome or 30/36-bit RGB) or one full (8 ¡Ñ 8-bit monochrome). Area-scan up to 64K ¡Ñ 64K and line-scan up to 64K ¡Ñ infinity with input frequencies up to 85 MHz.

Camera Link control lines for asynchronous reset and exposure control.

Camera Link serial ports for camera setup and control.

General Purpose input/output Interfaces

Camera power, LVDS/TTL and opto-coupler input/outputs are accessible via the PCI backplate 12-pin hirose connector or via two 26-pin header sockets on the PCB top edge. Assemblies consisting of ribbon cable to DB-25 connectors mounted on PCI backplate (these can be disassembled to mount on chassis cut-outs) may also be ordered.

Camera power is provided for 2 cameras: +12V factory defaults, while either of the outputs is hardware changeable for +5V. These are available on both hirose and header connectors. Resettable fuses of 1A are provided for both voltages.

LVDS and TTL inputs/outputs share physical pins. Selection of direction and standard is via software control. Up to 4 LVDS or TTL pairs are available. Each pair can be selected as 1 LVDS input or 1 LVDS output or 2 TTL inputs or 2 TTL outputs. Each I/O pair is replicated on the hirose connector as well as the header connectors. There are also 2 unique TTL outputs on the header connectors.

8 opto-coupler inputs and 8 outputs are provided on the header connectors. These have built-in resistors to minimize external components.

All I/O pins are protected by over/under voltage protection devices clamping to +5V and ground.

Application note «External trigger and flash» gives good overview of applications involving external devices such as trigger and flash and about connecting such devices to the frame grabber.

LUTs

2 LUTs are provided for user configuration as dual 4K ¡Ñ 12 or quad 256 ¡Ñ 8. As the physical memories are organized as 256K ¡Ñ 18, multiple banks are available.

Note: only one instead of two LUTs is available for PicPort®-Pro-CL-Mono, resulting in half the LUT size mentioned above for this model.

Real-Time Function: Bayer Decoder

A Bayer color decoder is available for one camera in some board configurations. This provides high-speed decoding of the Bayer pattern output by many color cameras. Using this on-board facility is an economical and fast solution to this color decoding requirement. Restrictions may appear for multi-tap cameras.

Data Storage and Transfer

Frame Buffer

A frame buffer (up to 48MB) is provided to buffer and reformat the pixel data grabbed from the camera, before passing it to the PCI bus DMA. A sophisticated controller facilitates combining of camera taps into a raster output to the PCI DMA. Features include:

  • auto line and frame length detection
  • multi-tap pixel rasterization
  • buffer fill level water mark interrupt
  • excellent bandwidth of up to 1 GB/s

DMA Controller

Output data from the Frame Buffer is passed to the DMA controller. This innovative design allows up to 16 DMA channels to be user defined, controlling data burst transfers over the PCI bus. Each DMA channel can also define a Region-Of-Interest within the data stream and can also re-transmit the data to multiple destinations on the PCI bus.

In conjunction with the color/monochrome data formatter, various formats of the image data can be transferred to host memory or VGA display memory.

Host Bus Interface

A universal (+5V and +3.3V compatible) PCI bus interface is provided that can operate at 32/64-bit, 33/66MHz. This provides hi-end PCI bus bandwidth at an affordable price.

Flash Memory Controller

The on-board flash memory stores the various configurations of the board that are loaded at power-up and also any software technology security information (software dongle).

Configurations

PicPort®-Pro-CL exists in following different fix configurations:

  • PicPort®-Pro-CL-Mono: with one base input
  • PicPort®-Pro-CL-Stereo: with 2 base or one medium input
  • PicPort®-Pro-CL-Full: with one full input, provides HW Bayer decoder
  • PicPort®-Pro-CL-Mono-RTF: with one base input and on-board Real-Time Function feature
  • PicPort®-Pro-CL-Stereo-RTF: with 2 base or one medium input and on-board Real-Time Function feature

Applications

  • industrial image processing
  • web inspection
  • traffic vision systems
  • medical imageing
  • and many more...

Digital I/O Interface

General Purpose I/O

PicPort®-Pro-CL boards provide various general purpose input/output interfaces. Location and pinout of the connectors is described in section Connector Description.

Camera power, LVDS/TTL and opto-coupler input/outputs are accessible via the PCI backplate 12-pin Hirose connector or via two 26-pin header sockets on the PCB top edge. Included in the deliverables package are 2 assemblies consisting of ribbon cable to DB-25 connectors mounted on PCI backplate (these can be disassembled to mount on chassis cut-outs).

Camera power is provided for 2 cameras and is +5V or +12V selectable (via on-board jumpers). These are available on both Hirose and header connectors. Resettable fuses are provided for both. LVDS (or RS422) and TTL inputs/outputs share physical pins (GPIO0_P0..GPIO7_N3). First index (before the undersocre) in the signal name refers to the TTL I/O, the second index refers to the LVDS I/O. Selection of direction and standard is via software control. Up to 4 LVDS or TTL pairs are available. Each pair can be selected as 1 LVDS input or 1 LVDS output or 2 TTL inputs or 2 TTL outputs. Each I/O pair is replicated on the Hirose connector as well as on the header connectors. There are also 2 unique TTL outputs on the header connectors.

8 optocoupler inputs and 8 outputs are provided on the header connectors. These have built-in resistors to minimize external components.

The 8 opto inputs are grouped into 4 pairs (01/23/45/67), each pair having a common Anode (+) and 2 Cathode (-) pins. The 8 opto outputs are grouped into 2 banks (0..3/4..7), each with 4 outputs. The Collector pins (OptoCx) of one bank do have pull-up resistors to a common rail TAP24V_03/47 which must be connected to the desired operation voltage (+5..24V). The Emitter pins (OptoEx) are normally connected to the ground terminal of the external voltage source. More details about the optocoupler interface are provided in the section below.

All I/O pins are protected by over/under voltage protection devices clamping to +5V and ground.

Optocoupler Interface

For use in industrial environment, PicPort®-Pro boards provide I/O signals isolated by use of optocouplers with variable 5V to 24V interface. To take full profit of this signal isolation, you have to connect the optocoupler to an external power supply.

The optocoupler input is prepared for input signals from 5 V to 24 V with the appropriate onboard serial resistors. The optooupler output is prepared for external voltage from 5 V to 24 V.

See also the following examples of optocoupler output. In industrial environment, signal levels of 24 V are usually needed.

Application note «External trigger and flash» gives good overview of applications involving external devices such as trigger and flash.

Software

Driver Software

Leutron Vision Software Development Suite, LV-SDS, is a software development package (Windows, Linux, VxWorks) that allows full control of all PicPort® and PicProdigy® products. The suite consists of Daisy - the basic software interface for PicPort®/PicProdigy® cards, Camera Editor - easy interactive setup of standard and non-standard cameras, DRAL - a library for handling specific time-critical tasks, Orchid - high level library (DLL or OCX) for quick and easy design of PicPort®/PicProdigy® applications, TWAIN Driver and Video for Windows - provide a simple interface between Leutron Vision hardware and other office and image manipulation programs (e.g. MS Office, CorelDRAW, etc.).

The software products come complete with a set of demo programs and additional examples with source code as a guide to the programmer in developing particular applications. To obtain more comprehensive information please download the LV-SDS manual.

Third Party Software

Several well-known third party packages for real-time image processing and analysis are also supported. The packages include HALCON, Activ Vision Tools, NeuroCheck, and others. Please refer to our detailed software brochure (PDF) for more details.

Connector Description, Wiring Schemes

Connector positions

This chapter provides description of the connectors, jumpers and DIP switches of PicPort®-Pro-CL. The following image show locations and pin #1 positions of all the connectors described below.

Camera connectors

Standard CameraLink connectors for base/medium/full configuration (model specific, see Technical specifications). The PicPort®-Pro-CL-Mono board possesses just a single (P2) CameraLink connector, the other models possess both (P1 and P2) connectors.

Please refer to official CameraLink specification to get the connector pinout.

Basic I/O connector

Hirose 12-pin female connector with camera power output and general purpose I/O signals; the connector is accessible from the backplate of the board.

Pin 1) Pin 2) Signal
9 1 GND
8 2 +V_CAM0
7 3 GPIO0_P0
6 4 GPIO4_N0
5 5 GPIO1_P1
4 6 GPIO5_N1
3 7 GPIO6_N2
2 8 GPIO3_P3
1 9 GPIO7_N3
10 10 GND
12 11 +V_CAM1
11 12 GPIO2_P2
1) Pin numbers for board series A only.
2) Pin numbers for board series B and later.

Universal I/O connectors

Two male header connectors (P4 and P6, both 13¡Ñ2 pin rows) with camera power output, opto-coupler interface, and general purpose I/O; the connectors are not directly accessible from the backplate of the board.

Note: The two pin header connectors may be connected via flat cable to different D-sub connectors. The following tables show also the relevant pins on those D- sub (25, 15 or 9 pin) connectors. Flat cable connected to one of the header pin rows must be aligned to pin 1!

Connector P4

Header connector P4
Signal Pin D-Sub 25/15/9 Pin Signal
Pin Pin
OptoC1 1 1/1/1 14/9/6 2 TAP24V_03
OptoE1 3 2/2/2 15/10/7 4 OptoC0
OptoA0_1 5 3/3/3 16/11/8 6 OptoE0
OptoK0 7 4/4/4 17/12/9 8 GND
OptoK1 9 5/5/5 18/13/- 10 +V_CAM0
GPIO0_P0 11 6/6/- 19/14/- 12 GND
GPIO4_N0 13 7/7/- 20/15/- 14 TTLOUT0
+V_CAM1 15 8/8/- 21/-/- 16 GND
OptoC2 17 9/-/- 22/-/- 18 OptoC3
OptoE2 19 10/-/- 23/-/- 20 OptoE3
OptoA2_3 21 11/-/- 24/-/- 22 GPIO1_P1
OptoK2 23 12/-/- 25/-/- 24 GPIO5_N1
OptoK3 25 13/-/- -/-/- 26 GND

Connector P6

Header connector P6
Signal Pin D-Sub 25/15/9 Pin Signal
Pin Pin
OptoC5 1 1/1/1 14/9/6 2 TAP24V_47
OptoE5 3 2/2/2 15/10/7 4 OptoC4
OptoA4_5 5 3/3/3 16/11/8 6 OptoE4
OptoK4 7 4/4/4 17/12/9 8 GND
OptoK5 9 5/5/5 18/13/- 10 +V_CAM0
GPIO2_P2 11 6/6/- 19/14/- 12 GND
GPIO6_N2 13 7/7/- 20/15/- 14 TTLOUT1
+V_CAM1 15 8/8/- 21/-/- 16 GND
OptoC6 17 9/-/- 22/-/- 18 OptoC7
OptoE6 19 10/-/- 23/-/- 20 OptoE7
OptoA6_7 21 11/-/- 24/-/- 22 GPIO3_P3
OptoK6 23 12/-/- 25/-/- 24 GPIO7_N3
OptoK7 25 13/-/- -/-/- 26 GND

Power Selector Jumpers

Two 3-pin male headers (S1 and S2) allowing to select the power output voltage that should be delivered to cameras through the I/O connectors (see Basic I/O and Universal I/O connector descriptions above).

The table below shows how to select between the +5V and +12V voltages for both available camera power outputs. The options for both outputs may be freely mixed, each may provide different voltage output.

Jumper connection Meaning
+5V voltage selected for V_CAM1 output
+12V voltage selected for V_CAM1 output
(factory default)
+5V voltage selected for V_CAM0 output
(factory default)
+12V voltage selected for V_CAM0 output

Note: The power selector jumpers are not available on board revision #1. Those boards provide fixed +12V camera power for both outputs (V_CAM0 and V_CAM1).

Control DIP Switches

The board possesses a DIP-switch device holding two switches (U26 on the figure above). Function description of the switches is described below. The pin marked as rectangle instead of an ellipse corresponds with OFF position of DIP-switch #1.

DIP-Switch Status Function
0 ON PCI gold bank boot select
OFF PCI gold bank boot disabled (default)
1 ON reserved
OFF reserved

PCI Gold Bank Protection (DIP Switch 0)

PCI Gold Banks should normally never be changed by the user. The prime function of the PCI Gold Banks is to guarantee a recovery mechanism after a Flash Bank programming cycle for an onboard FPGA has failed due to a system crash or power failure. In these cases the Flash Bank programming cycle can not be repeated without rebooting the system. However, since one or more Flash Banks may now contain corrupted FPGA configuration data it must ensured that these banks are not used for FPGA configuration after the next system reboot.

For this purpose DIP switch 0 of the Flash Controller (GoldBootSel) must be set to the 'ON' position. In GoldBoot mode the Flash Controller configures the PCI-FPGA from the Gold PCI Bank but leaves the Video-FPGA and CLP-FPGA idle. The Flash programming cycle can now be repeated. After the Flash programming has been completed successfully the GoldBootSel can be reset and the system must be power-cycled (not soft-reset) before the Flash Bank update takes effect.

Power Intput Connector

Standard PC power supply connector (5/12V), male, on the top side of the board (connector P8). The connector should be connected to power supply (use power supply cable of your PC) if the total current used by the cameras is more than 1A; in such case, delivering the power over PCI bus is not possible.

Technical Specifications

  PicPort-Pro-CL-Mono
PicPort-Pro-CL-Mono-RTF
PicPort-Pro-CL-Stereo
PicPort-Pro-CL-Stereo-RTF
PicPort-Pro-CL-Full
Camera Link modes Base Base and medium Full
Multiple Camera Link inputs 1 in base mode 2 in base mode
1 in medium mode
1 in full mode
Camera Link acquisition rate Up to 66 MHz per input Up to 85 MHz per input
Camera scan modes Area-scan or line-scan
PCI bus form factor Standard PCI bus 64-bit, short card
PCI bus interface Universal 32/64-bit, 33/66 MHz
PCI bus burst transfer rate 533 MB/s peak, 360 MB/s sustained
PCI bus DMA channels 16 with independent ROI and retransmit modes
On-board memory 16 MB DDR SDRAM, 512 kB SSRAM, 16 Mb flash 32 MB DDR SDRAM, 1 MB SSRAM, 16 Mb flash 48 MB DDR SDRAM, 1 MB SSRAM, 16 Mb flash
Color/monochrome data conversion RGB or monochrome target formats with various depths and data packing options
LUTs Single 256K¡Ñ18-bit Dual 256K¡Ñ18-bit
Frame buffer bandwidth 350 MB/s 700 MB/s 1 GB/s
Frame buffer features Low-latency input/output,
Multi-tap combining,
Up to 64K¡Ñ64K area-scan,
Up to 64K¡Ñinfinity line-scan,
Image fill level interrupt
Bayer color decoder In the RTF version, restrictions may appear for multi-tap cameras In the RTF version, for one camera only, restrictions may appear for multi-tap cameras Yes, for one camera only, restrictions may appear for multi-tap cameras
TTL inputs * 8
TTL outputs * 10
LVDS inputs * 4
LVDS outputs * 4
Opto-coupled inputs 8
Opto-coupled outputs 8
Camera power +12V @ 1.5A (+5V option)
Camera power protection Resettable fuse
Hardware technology FPGA user re-programmable
Board power requirements (excluding camera power) +5V @ 3A
Operating temperature range 0 ¢XC to 70 ¢XC
Relative humidity Up to 95 % (non-condensing)
FCC Class A
CE Class A
Dimensions PCI short card form factor 16.5 ¡Ñ 11 cm
*LVDS and TTL inputs and outputs share common pins and hence only one format can be selected for each pair of pins.

Complementary and Related Products

Supporting software

Comprehensive set of software tools consisting of video capture libraries and image processing libraries for Windows XP/2000/NT4, Windows Me/98/95 and for Linux. Please check especially the following ones:

Daisy
Video capture library of LV-SDS (Software Development Suite). Object oriented library of functions controlling all features of PicPort® and PicProdigy® boards.
Camera editor
An easy-to-use application enabling user to connect one of many predefined video sources or specify another, even nonstandard one.
DRAL
Extension libraries for Daisy providing real-time functionality of PicPort®/PicProdigy® frame grabbers.
Orchid
High level library for developing interactive applications with a few lines of code in visual tools like Microsoft Visual Basic, Borland Delphi, Borland C++ Builder, etc. Available as a DLL or as an OCX component.

Suitable Cameras

Please check the list of suitable cameras (CameraLink models) for use with PicPort®-Pro-CL. The link invokes page showing wide list of different suitable cameras, allowing you to specify more criterions and restrict the list only to the cameras exactly matching your needs.

Correspondent cables

All the necessary cables for connecting a camera to the framegrabber are available.

Related Frame Grabbers

PicPort®-Digital
Frame grabber with LVDS (RS422/RS644) digital interface.
PicPort®-Mono/Stereo
Frame grabber for standard and non-standard monochrome analog cameras.
PicPort®-Pro-CL-PMC
PMC module version of the PicPort®-Pro-CL board.

LVmPC®

LVmPC® is an ultra compact, mobile image processing system for industrial and machine vision, based on standard PC technology and Leutron's frame grabber series. LVmPC® is available in a huge variety of different configurations.

Ordering Information

Ordering number Product Description
11100 PicPort®-Pro-CL-Stereo CameraLink board for two base or one medium camera, standard PCI bus
11101 PicPort®-Pro-CL-Full CameraLink board for one full camera, standard PCI bus
HW Bayer decoder function
11102 PicPort®-Pro-CL-Mono CameraLink board for one base camera, standard PCI bus
11103 PicPort®-Pro-CL-Stereo-RTF CameraLink board for two base or one medium camera, standard PCI bus
On-board Real-Time Function (currently supporting HW Bayer decoder)
11104 PicPort®-Pro-CL-Mono-RTF CameraLink board for one base camera, standard PCI bus
On-board Real-Time Function (currently supporting HW Bayer decoder)
Complementary products
16028 LV-SDS Driver software developer's suit for Windows and Linux
15000 Potoelectric reflex switch set Ready to use with PicPort®-Mono/Stereo-PMC, consists of photoelectric reflex switch, self adhesive reflective tape and mounting parts
15012 Optocoupler test board Enables testing of the opto-isolated I/O functionality of all PicPort® framegrabbers
19152 Cab/3m/CL 3m Camera Link cable

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