National Instruments PCI-1424 Digital Camera Image Acquisition Board

The NI PCI-1424 (Part Numbers: 777662-01 RS-422/TTL and 777662-02 LVDS/TTL) is a 32-Bit Resolution, Parallel Digital Frame Grabber Device. This device is designed to acquire color, as well as greyscale images and to control digital cameras. The NI PCI-1424 is an ideal device for capturing high-resolution digital images. This device features an internal memory where images are processed and stored initially at a clock speed of 50 MHz for an accumulative acquisition rate of 200 MB/s. The PCI 1424 Frame Grabber comes with 16 MB memory. However, the user can choose to utilize memory modules to increase the onboard memory. To achieve an increase in the overall throughput, the user can utilize the onboard memory, since it provides adequate buffering for large images before having them transferred to PC memory.

The NI PCI-1424 comes with the NI Vision Acquisition Software 8.0 or later, which is fully compatible with software packages/application development environments (ADEs) such as LabVIEW, LabWindows/CVI, Microsoft Visual Basic, NI Vision Builder for Automated Inspection, NI Vision Development Module, and Measurement Studio. NI Vision Acquisition Software comes with the NI-IMAQ driver. This Frame Grabber can be used with D100 series camera cables, but this is dependent on the user’s camera. The device has a 100-pin SCSI type I/O connector.

This device has dual clock outputs, which are used for generating 500 kHz up to 50 MHz frequency for digital imaging devices or cameras that require an external clock. To control digital cameras, the IMAQ PCI-1424 features an RS232 Serial Interface. The lines of the RS232 are incorporated on the 100-pin connector. Thus, this option can be used to control devices with a serial interface. For real-time mapping of the data from one value to another, the NI PCI-1424 has four 8-bit or two 16-bit LUTs (lookup tables). In addition, configuration of a rectangular ROI window can be accomplished for the reduction of overall data across the PCI bus. This device supports up to 4 external trigger I/O lines with a voltage range of 0 V to 5 V (TTL). It has a weight of 0.5 lbs., with the dimensions: 4.5 x 13.2 in.