National Instruments PCIe-1429 High-Performance Camera Link

The National Instruments NI PCIe-1429 (Part number: 779191-01) Camera Link is a four-lane PCI Express interface, which is well-suited for a variety of life science, biomedical imaging, and industrial applications. The NI PCIe-1429 is the first PCI Express Image Acquisition Board in the industry. This Camera Link can acquire at the highest Camera Link rate of 680 MB/s through a regular PC bus. The PCIe-1429 comes with a single trigger line and two Camera Link connectors which will operate with any type of Camera Link camera. Extra I/O lines are additionally available with the IMAQ-1000 expansion board. More I/O lines allow for pulse-train outputs, advanced triggering, and isolated DIO.

The NI PCIe-1429 can be used for all three types of Camera Link configurations: base, medium, and full. The base configuration utilizes three 8-bit input channels to obtain 24 bits of data maximum at a rate of 340 MB/s. On the other hand, the full configuration has eight input channels and can obtain images at a rate of 680 MB/s maximum. While utilizing the PCIe-1429, users can synchronize other data acquisition measurements with each obtained image to assess events frame by frame in data-intensive applications, including crash tests.

The NI PCIe-1429 driver software included is NI-IMAQ 3.1. To program the Camera Link, the driver software is necessary. The NI-IMAQ driver has a multitude of functions, including: ongoing and one shot image acquisition, patterns for video configuration, trigger control, memory buffer allocation, and much more. The software recommended for the PCIe-1429 is Vision Development Module, Vision Builder for Automated Inspection, or LabVIEW.