The Automated Imaging Association (AIA) has released the Camera Link HS draft standard (version 1.0). After a period of review by a committee of industry experts, the standard will be finalised and released to the public in 2012.
Camera Link HS is a new high-speed camera communications protocol standard. The standard is hosted by AIA and is being developed as a global standard as outlined by the cooperation agreement on global machine vision standardisation between the AIA, European Machine Vision Association (EMVA) and the Japan Industrial Imaging Association (JIIA).
Camera Link HS is the next generation advancement to AIA's well-established Camera Link standard. It features high bandwidth (up to five times faster than Camera Link with up to 33.6Gb/s and future versions to 67.2Gb/s), data reliability (packet re-transmit which significantly reduces errors is available now in draft 1.0), low jitter, plug and play ease-of-use, built-in fault tolerance with CRC (cyclical redundancy check), cable lengths of up to 300 metres on fibre optic cable and 15 metres on copper cable with CX4 connectors. It is also GenICam compliant, which will allow for an easy transition from Camera Link to Camera Link HS.
'With the release of Camera Link HS, the industry will have the best interface for demanding applications,' said Bob McCurrach, AIA's director of standards development. 'Camera Link HS is truly a real-time connection, there are no latency issues. Because Camera Link is so well known and widely used, we're sure to see Camera Link HS products multiply in the next year. Camera Link HS will increase the speed and throughput of vision systems, helping companies run faster with fewer errors.'
With the addition of Camera Link HS, the Camera Link family of standards offers a protocol for a wide variety of needs. AIA also just released Camera Link 2.0, an update to the existing Camera Link standard. This standard will remain active for those who need reliable real-time speeds up to 6.8Gb/s over 10 metre cable. Power Over Camera Link (PoCL) allows the camera to be powered by the frame grabber through the Camera Link cable, which saves space and money. PoCL-Lite offers a smaller form factor for low-cost solutions.
