4—Tau 640 Digital Data Channel
Tau 640 User’s Manual
4-6
June 2011
TAU-0640-00-10, version 110
4.4 Camera Link Interface
The Tau Camera Link accessory board can be used to capture digital data from the Tau
camera. The Tau Camera Link accessory board has four connectors.
• The Camera Link accessory board has the mate to the 80-pin Hirose connector on
the Tau core. Power and communication are supplied to the core from the Camera
Link accessory. The core receives analog video and CMOS digital data from the
core.
• The mini-USB connector receives power and communication from a host though the
USB cable. The Camera Link accessory converts USB protocol to high speed serial
format for the Tau core.
• The MCX coaxial connection provides access to the camera analog video output
(NTSC or PAL)
• The 26-position Mini-D-Ribbon (MDR) Camera link connector provides the output
interface for camera digital data. This connector does not support power over
Camera link. This connector does not support serial communication over Camera
Link.
This accessory conforms to the Camera Link standard as Base Configuration type 14-bit x 1.
The Tau CMOS data interface has a Frame sync, Line sync, Data bus, and a pixel clock which
runs at 10.5MHz (see section 4.X). To be compliant with the transmission standard the Tau
Camera Link accessory up samples data to achieve minimum data rate. The Camera link data
clock is running at 21MHz. Data is double sampled so that the output is equivalent to: Pixel1,
Pixel1, Pixel2, Pixel2, Pixel3, Pixel3, …, Pixel638, Pixel 638, Pixel639, Pixel639 in each row.
The Frame Valid clock it true during valid lines of data. The Line valid clock is true during valid
pixels in each line. The Data Valid clock is true for every other pixel. It is important that the
Camera Link receiver device uses all three control clocks (some inexpensive models ignore Data
Valid).
In order to use a Camera Link Module for acquisition of data, you will need to first enable the
CMOS XP Bus Output using the FLIR Camera Controller. This option is found under Video =>
Digital Video. On this same page, you can select either 8-bit or 14-bit digital output. Once you
make these changes, it is a good idea to save settings to make them power cycle consistent.
You can do this after clicking Setup.
The digital data complies with Base Camera Link standards and should be compatible with any
brand Camera Link Frame Grabber and software. FLIR has tested the ImperX FrameLink
Express frame grabber (
http://imperx.com/frame-grabbers/framelink-express
).
The FLIR Camera Controller allows for control of the Tau Camera, but does not support Camera
Link frame capture and third-party software must be used. The ImperX frame grabber comes
FrameLink Express software that allows for recording single or multiple images (BMP, JPG, TIF,
and RAW) as well as standard AVI clips. Configuration requires selecting 1 TAP, L->R for the tap
reconstruction, selecting the appropriate bit depth that you chose in the FLIR Camera
Controller, and clicking “Learn” to discover the number of digital pixels available.
