FalconQuattro is a logical further development of the popular FALCON family. The FALCONquattro has four complete PCI Frame Grabbers on one board and behaves in principle as if you had 4 FALCON boards in one computer. That means: the complete flexibility of FALCON multiplied by 4. There is a lot of resulting advantages:
-Parallel frame grabbing of up to four cameras
-Mixed operation of color and b/w cameras
-16 video inputs
-Parallel digitising of a video signal in display and main memory
-Independent settings for each channel
-Only one PCI slot
-Low costs
In addition to this, the FALCONquattro has 16 digital inputs and 8 digital outputs with floating access to all inputs and outputs via an optional optocoupler board for 24 V levels. The pin assignment of the plug is compatible with Piranha and Piranha II.
1. Using one camera:
One camera to be displayed live with 25 fps (fps = frames per second) on the VGA screen. An overlay for text and graphics is required. Parallel to this, the digitised video data is also required for image processing at 25 fps in the PC memory. Both color depth and image size, as well as all variable image parameters, can be set inde- pendently from each other
PC system memory VGA board + non-destructive overlay.
2. Use of 2 cameras: Both cameras are written with 25 fps in the VGA board and the PC system memory. This case is classical for a wide range of machines where 2 or more cameras are being positioned.
PC system memory VGA board + non-destructive overlay PC system memory VGA board + non-destructive overlay
3. Parallel grabbing of several cameras: Several cameras to be written simultaneously into the memory for image processing or for image display in the VGA board. All images can be in full resolution as long as the selected color mode does not exceed color depth of 16 bits. Settings for each channel can be selected as required.
Falcon Framegrabbing
The FALCONquattro supports all color and monochrome cameras with a standard video composite or SVHS video output. These are digitised with high precision and trans- ferred to the PC. The maximum frame resolution is 768 x 576 pixel per channel. The size of the frame can be set independently for each channel using an interpolating scaler for X and Y directions. It is also possible to reduce live frames down to 16 x 16 pixel
25 Images/s in VGA or PC system memory Video1 25 Images/s in VGA or PC system memory Video2 25 Images/s in VGA or PC system memory Video3 25 Images/s in VGA or PC system memory Video4
Switching Speeds Above four cameras each, there are no switching times for an input multiplexer to be taken into account. 4 cameras are always digitised parallel. This means that up to four camera images are available simultaneously on the PC within 40 ms with 50 Hz , or 33ms with 60Hz cameras.
MULTIBOARD OPERATION The driver is capable of interrupt sharing and supports the simultaneous parallel operation of several cards in one computer. The number of Frame Grabbers in a PC is multiplied by 4 with each additional FALCONquattro. 8 images can be digitised simultaneous- ly with two cards. You have to take into account, howe ver, that the images no longer have full resolution because the band width of the PCI BUS represents the bottleneck.
DIGITAL INPUTS & OUTPUTS 16 digital inputs and 8 digital outputs are available for a digital data exchange with external periphery. 24 V level can be triggered via an optional optocoupler board. The inputs (12mA per channel) are protected against short circuits and polarity reversal. The outputs (100 mA per channel) are protected against overvoltage optocoupler board
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT KIT An outstanding feature of the FALCONquattro is its all-round high perfor- mance SDK. The SDK makes it possible for EMS to use all hardware performance characteristics. A demonstration program as small application is included with the kit to demonstrate the performance capabilities of the SDK. The source text of this application
SETTINGS All parameters such as image size, image sec tion, contrast, brightness, colour value and color saturation can be set individually for each channel
IMAGE DISPLAY Image display is always on the PC's VGA screen. The images are transmitted in video real-time via the PCI bus with virtually no CPU load and presented as live image on the monitor.
written in Microsoft Visual C/C++ demonstrates the programming of the board and helps with the integration of FALCONquattro in own programs.
OVERLAY The FALCONquattro software development kit provides various functions for overlaying the video images with text and graphics. The support of DirectDraw (DD) and the DD Backbuffer and DD Overlay Surface enables the requi- red mode to be used according to the installed VGA board. The latter is not compatible with all VGA boards. The CPU load is less than 5 %.
resolution is 768 x 576 pixel per channel. The size of the frame can be set independently for each channel using an interpolating scaler for X and Y directions. It is also possible to reduce live frames down to 16 x 16 pixel
You have to take into account, howe ver, that the images no longer have full resolution because the band width of the PCI BUS represents the bottleneck.
The inputs (12mA per channel) are protected against short circuits and polarity reversal. The outputs (100 mA per channel) are protected against overvoltage optocoupler board
