Press Release

22.05.07„Interlaced goes Digital“

New AVT Guppy Cameras Make Access to Digital Technologies Simpler Than Ever

Allied Vision Technologies has expanded its range of Guppy cameras with new models with interlaced sensors and clears the way for the transition from analog to digital transmission technology.

With the recent introduction of the Guppy camera range,  Allied Vision Technologies, the leading provider of industrial digital cameras, provides an attractive solution for industrial users intending to upgrade from analog to digital technologies. With the new Guppy line, users of applications employing interlaced sensors now have an ideal opportunity to exploit the advantages of analog technologies in the digital world too.

Hardly Compatible – Until Now: Digital and Interlaced
Even today, most industrial image processing systems still employ analog data transmission technologies. “An important reason for this is that almost every second application employs interlaced sensors,” says Ingo Lewerendt, Product Manager at Allied Vision Technologies. This sensor type provides advantages in the fields of data transmission speed and sensitivity, but was, until now, only available for cameras with analog interfaces.

For many users, the lack of availability of digital interlaced sensor solutions therefore meant that they had to forgo these advantages when upgrading from analogue to digital. However, for many applications requiring high sensitivity, it is impossible to do so without cameras equipped with interlaced sensors. “Even if we ignore this aspect, the changeover from interlaced to progressive scan sensors would have been complex and expensive,” explains Ingo Lewerendt, “as, in most cases, lenses, lighting and software would have had to be changed to permit the use of digital image processing with progressive scan.” As a consequence, many users considered a changeover to be too complex and expensive.

The Best of Both Worlds – Interlaced Goes Digital
With the new interlaced Guppy camera models, Allied Vision Technologies now forges a link between formerly analog-only interlaced technologies and digital FireWire interfaces and, as a result, makes the transition from analog to digital signal transmission simpler than ever before.

“This innovation now allows our customers to combine interlaced sensors with digital technologies for the first time ever,” says a satisfied Ingo Lewerendt. The new cameras are still equipped with the same interlaced sensors as the majority of analog systems. So the migration to a digital interface can be performed without any changes to the other system components such as sensors, lenses and software. “The new AVT cameras safeguard earlier investments in interlaced sensor-based systems and optimize operations by employing digital signal transmission technologies,” explains Lewerendt. “In this way, the user no longer has to choose between the respective advantages of analog and digital technologies: now users really have the best of both worlds.”

The new interlaced cameras are based on the same platform as the other Guppy models and have the same compact form and FireWire 1394a interface. They are equipped with Sony interlaced CCD sensors with 0.25, 0.29, 0.38 or 0.44 megapixels and are available for black and white and color requirements. The range also features two versions with near infrared (NIR) 1/2" sensors. The interlaced Guppy is supplied with a new version of the AVT FirePackage software (2.6).