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RMV Operations Manual Revision Copyright illunis LLC, 2014
Page 111
8.0: Camera Link
Overview
Camera Link
is a communication interface for visual applications that use digital imaging.
The Camera Link (CL) interface is built upon the National Semiconductor channel link technology and
specifies how image data is formatted and transferred. Channel Link consists of a driver and a receiver
pair. The driver accepts 28 single ended data signals and a single ended clock. The data is serialized
7:1 and the four data streams and a dedicated clock are transmitted over five LVDS pairs. The received
accepts the four data streams and the clock, decodes the data, and drives the 28 bits of data to capture
circuit.
Image data and image enables are transmitted on the Camera Link bus.
The four Enable signals are:
FVAL: Frame Valid is defined HIGH for valid lines
LVAL: Line Valid is defined HIGH for valid pixels
DVAL: Data Valid is defined HIGH for valid data.
SPARE: undefined, for future use.
Four LVDS pairs are reserved for general purpose camera control. They are defined as camera
inputs and frame grabber outputs. The signals are CC1, CC2, CC3, CC4. The RMV uses CC1 as the
trigger source.
The Camera Link interface has three configurations. The naming conventions for the three con-
figurations are:
Base:
Single Channel Link chip, single cable connector.
Medium:
Two Channel Link chips, two cable connectors.
Full:
Three Channel Link chips, two cable connectors.
The RMV is a base Cameral Link configuration.
Camera Link
Cable
Channel
Link
Transmit
Commu-
nication
Camera
Link
Format
Camera Link Cable Connections and Data Path
28 bits
Trigger
Channel
Link
Receive
Communi-
cation
Trigger
28 bits