Industrial Cameras

JAI Machine Vision Cameras

We’ve been working with JAI for almost 40 years and they continue to offer innovation, value, performance, and capability. JAI’s extensive product line features:

  • Multi-wavelength prism-based cameras for multispectral monochrome and RGB color, RGB + NIR, RGB + SWIR, and multi-wavelength SWIR imaging in area scan and line scan configurations.
    • Prism-based camera technology ensures all multi-spectral and RGB image sensors are perfectly aligned so that a pixel position on one sensor occupies the same XY position on all sensors. This ensures full sensor resolution on each output channel, potentially replacing multiple single-wavelength cameras.
  • High-performance single-sensor area scan cameras, including NIR, SWIR, and UV-sensitive, with spatial resolutions currently up to 45 megapixels.
  • Line scan cameras in 2K, 4K, 8K and 16K resolutions.
  • Physical interfaces supported by JAI cameras include Camera Link®, GigE Vision®, CoaXPress®, and USB3 Vision digital standards, along with SFP+ fiber optic transmission to interface the cameras with a wide range of machine vision systems.

 Multispectral Prism-Based Area Scan Cameras

This series uses JAI’s prism technology to send the same image to 3 separate image sensors, each handling a different wavelength range. The sensors and pixels are perfectly aligned, providing multi-spectral metrology and inspection results and maintaining full sensor resolution per output channel.

Color Prism-Based Area Scan Cameras

A key problem with using a color camera with a single image sensor is the presence of a Bayer filter, where not every pixel sees every color and the sensor interpolates the pixel color values at each XY position.

For applications where color fidelity and image resolution are critical, JAI has directly addressed this issue with a prism-based 3-sensor RGB camera. Each of 3 precisely aligned full-resolution sensors are equipped with hard dichroic prism filters that provide steep spectral cutoffs to direct pure red, green, and blue wavelengths to their dedicated image sensors. Color information is provided for each XY pixel position in the captured image, with full sensor resolution per color channel. In-camera color space conversion, supporting RGB to HSI, RGB to CIE XYZ, and RGB to sRGB/Adobe RGB transformations, is available on the camera itself, saving external processing time.

Single Sensor Area Scan Cameras 

JAI single sensor area scan cameras are available in monochrome, color, and UV-sensitive models. A broad range of sensors, resolutions, and pixel sizes are available to help fine-tune performance to better match the application.

 

Prism-Based Line Scan Cameras

JAI has introduced some truly unique prism-based line scan cameras, ensuring that the position of a pixel in the image is the same at all wavelengths.

  • Dual-band imaging in the Short-Wave InfraRed (SWIR) light spectrum, using the prism to image 900-1400 nm and 1400-1700 nm and separate SWIR sensors.
  • In addition to 3-sensor prism line scan cameras providing RGB outputs, JAI’s 4-sensor line scan cameras will simultaneously capture R-G-B image data in the visible light spectrum and image data in the near infrared (NIR) light spectrum.
    • The 4-sensor line scan cameras can simultaneously capture R-G-B image data in the visible light spectrum and image data in the short-wave infrared (SWIR) light spectrum.

 

Single Sensor Line Scan Cameras

JAI monochrome single-sensor line scan cameras are available in 2K, 4K, 8K, and 16K, operating at very high rates and with direct connection to rotary encoders.

Multi-Line Sensor Line Scan Cameras

JAI line scan cameras are available with bilinear and trilinear sensors for RGB output when a prism is not required.

 

JAI Software

JAI provides several types of control software and development kits to support their cameras.

For additional information and a discussion on JAI camera selection, please contact R.J. Wilson, Inc. at 781-335-5500 or by e-mail at [email protected].

PIXELINK MACHINE VISION CAMERAS

Pixelink’s PL-U Series Compact USB 3.1 Gen 1 Cameras are designed for precision engineering, achieving faster integration, cleaner designs, and high-resolution imaging, all in their smallest camera yet.

PL-U Series USB3 camera features include:

  • Sony Pregius Sensors, including the latest 4th generation models for superior image quality providing 2.3MP to 20MP resolution
  • Available HDR High Dynamic Range imaging
  • Board level cameras and enclosed cameras
  • Robust SDK & API accelerate development with full programmability

Pixelink’s PL-D Series of USB3 cameras feature:

  • Sensors from Sony and CMOSIS in multiple sensor sizes, resolutions, frame rates, and pixel sizes, providing 2.2MP to 24MP resolution.
  • Available HDR High Dynamic Range imaging
  • Board level cameras and enclosed cameras
  • Robust SDK & API accelerate development with full programmability

For additional information on Pixelink’s USB3.0 cameras, please download these documents:

Real-Time HDR (High Dynamic Range) Imaging

It is challenging to overcome brightness variations across a captured image to extract details from both darker areas and bright, sometimes oversaturated, areas of the image.

Pixelink has directly and transparently addressed this with its on-board HDR Imaging. When the HDR function is enabled, two images, one low-gain and one high-gain, are output to the built-in FPGA to process an HDR image. Using the HDR function cuts the maximum camera frame rate in half. However, the 7.1MP color or monochrome camera is still running at 28fps and the frame rate for the 2.8MP color or monochrome camera is 70fps, even with HDR “on”. This is plenty of camera speed for most applications.

As seen in the example above, the combination of a low gain image (left) used for bright areas of a scene, along with a high gain image (center) used for dark areas of a scene, allows details to be discerned in both the bright and dark areas of the camera’s computed output image (right) using HDR.

The Low Gain and High Gain Images are Created Simultaneously, Processed On-Board the Camera, and the HDR (High Dynamic Range) Image (right) is Output from the Camera.

As seen in the example above, the combination of a low gain image (left) used for bright areas of a scene, along with a high gain image (center) used for dark areas of a scene, allows details to be discerned in both the bright and dark areas of the camera’s computed output image (right) using HDR.

  • All image processing is performed by the on-board FPGA to output the HDR image directly.
  • No additional PC processing resources are required.
  • Real time on-camera HDR is an easy way for the user to gain 6dB-10dB of additional dynamic range in the image.

For additional information and a discussion on Pixelink camera selection, please contact R.J. Wilson, Inc. at 781-335-5500 or by e-mail at [email protected].