The Beta Interface Dummy Board acts as a bridge between the image sensor board and the rest of the camera. It converts communication between the aforementioned components to a standard protocol so that almost any image sensor that becomes available in the future can be used with the AXIOM Beta without changing the rest of the hardware. If AXIOM users felt that 8K was in demand they would simply swap the sensor board for one capable of capturing images in the desired resolution.

Note: The present iteration of Interface Board limits image sensor throughput to 150FPS@4K. This current Interface Board connects 32+3 of the 64+3 LVDS channels available in the CMV12000. A 'Smart Sensor Interface Board', however, would allow the camera to get 4K@300 FPS into the pipeline. High speed memory on this board would allow buffering of images for high speed recording bursts or temporal binning/averaging and thus allow for use of the microzed with output being slower than acquisition bandwidths. Requires 400+ IO so XC7A200T FBG676 FPGA which is 200+€ is the only option (covered by webpack license though). Herbert has done a few tests to see if it would be possible to do with OSHpark stackups and the conclusion was: doable but non-trivial. The general design is rather straight forward (connect 36 LVDS pairs on one end and 80 LVDS pairs on the other end to an FPGA). But it is also completely unknown how much processing can be done there and what that means for cooling, etc (not only the MicroZed, but the SIB itself will also heat up). The simplest application is the 'gearwork' between SFE and MB. It could also run a sensor emulation eliminating the SFE for many development task and/or testing. It could do fancy stuff with the sensor data (preprocessing).

If you'd like to assist with development in this area please make contact.

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Revisions

Current:

axiom beta interface dummy v0.13

Archive:

axiom beta interface dummy v0.9