One Instead of Four
Single Link Low Cost CoaXPress Frame Grabber
The Aon-CXP is a low cost single link CoaXPress frame grabber. While it looks tiny, it has all the power of its big brother, the Cyton. Single link CXP cameras are coming out that are 29mm cubes. While this sounds tiny, they can still get 6.25Gb/s worth of data over the link.
The Aon PC2 CXP1-V16 is a single link low cost solution for CXP which is priced to work with the single link CXP cameras that are rapidly emerging on the market. (Bild: BitFlow, Inc.)
Its big brother – the Cyton-CXP frame grabber – is based on BitFlow’s PCIe Gen 2.0 platform and has a Gen 2.0×8 PCIe bus interface. The Gen 2.0 bus doubles the data rate of the Gen 1.0 bus while using the same footprint and connectors. It is fully backwards compatible with Gen 1.0 motherboards but the data rate will be cut in half. The frame grabber can acquire fixed or variable size images and features a programmable Region of Interest sub-windowing capability. It provides power for all cameras up to 13W per link and provides safe power with full protection from all power line faults. It is supported on both 32-bit and 64-bit platforms and is compatible with all PCIe x8/x16 slots Gen 1.0 through Gen 3.0. BitFlow offers three different CXP frame grabbers. The Cyton family consists of a dual link and a quad link board. The company recently introduced the Aon CXP, a single link low cost solution for CXP. The Cyton-CXP2 supports one dual link CXP-6 camera or two single link CXP-6 cameras. The Cyton-CXP4 can be configured in many different ways. It can acquire one quad CXP-6 camera or four single link CXP-6 cameras or anything in between. When acquiring from multiple cameras, each camera is attached to its own virtual frame grabber allowing independent acquisition and control of each camera. The Aon supports one CXP-6 camera. This compliments the Cyton CXP family for market ready cameras with one to four links while utilizing the same BitFlow cross interface SDK. The Aon is priced to work with the single link CXP cameras that are rapidly emerging on the market. These new CXP cameras are also low cost, have a small form factor and are capable of data rates significantly higher than GigE Vision and USB3 cameras while offering cable lengths of up to 68m when running at CXP-6 speed. In essence, it’s an improved hybrid of the best of GigE Vision (distance) and USB3.0 (speed) with a simple low cost coaxial cable. CoaXPress provides an increase in quality, resolution and speed over analog, while maintaining its simple and flexible cabling.
