New intelligent 32-bit Windows-based camera interface software makes it easier for developers of scientific /industrial imaging systems to use complex video devices
November 19, 1996, Montreal, Canada - Today, the Matrox Imaging Products Group announced Matrox Intellicam 2.0, 32-bit camera interface software for Windows NT and 95. Traditionally,
interfacing vision hardware to non-standard cameras has been difficult and time consuming. Matrox Intellicam software meets the growing need for easy-to-use camera interface tools, as more applications require
the use of non-standard cameras. Now, OEMs and integrators can quickly and interactively interface virtually all video devices to Matrox imaging hardware.
Non-standard cameras are one of the many different types of complex video devices used in machine vision, medical imaging and image analysis today. High-speed machine vision can
use double-speed progressive-scan cameras with single or dual video outputs. Other industrial inspection applications use asynchronous reset cameras with exposure control. For continuous web inspection in printing, wood, textile, and steel industries; developers need to interface to color and monochrome line
scan cameras with very long line lengths and dynamically variable line rates. For medical imaging, developers use multitap high-resolution cameras. Semiconductor inspection and biomedical analysis demand interfacing vision hardware to scanning electron microscopes.
Matrox Intellicam walks a developer through the interface procedure through a series of menus and dialog boxes in a user-friendly, Windows-based based environment. The software comes with a set of pre-built
"digitizer configuration format files" (DCFs) for many popular cameras. A DCF describes the video signal's characteristics in detail. This file is used to communicate the video specifications to the digitizer and initialize the hardware. The user simply
points and clicks to load a DCF for a particular device.
If a DCF for a specific camera is not provided, a user simply modifies an existing DCF or has the option to start from scratch. A user can fine tune the parameters in a DCF to match a specific camera's characteristics and functionality. A sample of
the parameters includes video timing, pixel clock, bit depth, synchronization, exposure, and more. Matrox Intellicam is intelligent; it alerts a user to errors when modifying camera parameters in a DCF and suggests possible corrections.
The utility allows a user to grab images and store them to an industry standard file format (TIFF), without writing single line of code. Another feature of Matrox Intellicam is the built-in command line interpreter. All of the functions contained in
the MIL/MIL-Lite library can be accessed using Matrox Intellicam's MIL Interpreter.It lets a user experiment with MIL/MIL-Lite commands without having to recompile every time a change is made. Matrox Intellicam is provided at no
charge with all Matrox imaging hardware, including Matrox Meteor, a standard frame grabber; Matrox Pulsar, a non-standard grabber, and Matrox Genesis, an image processor.
