Image Acquisition
This chapter gives detailed information about the controlling of the image acquisition. It
shows how the camera can be triggered or run in free-running mode, and how the frame rate
can be configured.
The structure offers a lot of flexibility in the configuration. It follows the GenI-
Cam naming convention. Typical camera configurations are included in the chap-
ter "Use Cases" in the Appendix C.
4.1 Overview
The overview shows the major camera elements which are involved in the image acquisition.
The section starts with a description of the vocabulary and terms, which are used to explain the
acquisition related features.
4.1.1 Vocabulary
An acquisition is composed of one or many frames. A frame is a single acquired image which
consists of an exposure time and an image read out. A burst of frame is defined as a capture of
a group of one or many frames within an acquisition. So an acquisition can be grouped in N
single frames or N burst of frames.
4.1.2 Structure
The camera contains a block that controls the image acquisition which contains the sub-blocks
for acquisition control, frame control and exposure control. Furthermore there are a controller
blocks of I/O signals, counters, timers and software interface. All of these elements can be
connected through an interconnection, which allows to control the image acquisition by digital
input signals, by counters, by timers and/or software access.
L E D
L i n e O u t
L i n e I n
Figure 4.1: Structure
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I / O
C o n t r o l
S o f t w a r e S i g n a l
P u l s e
&
U s e r O u t p u t
S i g n a l R o u t i n g
A c q u i s i t i o n
C o n t r o l
+ o u n t e r / T i m e r
F r a m e
E x p o s u r e
C o n t r o l
C o n t r o l
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