Point Grey, a designer and manufacturer of high-performance digital cameras, announced its latest innovation in imaging with the Grasshopper3, a machine vision camera that combines charge-coupled device (CCD) technology with a universal serial bus (USB) 3.0 interface. The Grasshopper3 meets a growing demand from machine vision and life science applications for a combination of highly sensitive CCD global shutter technology, high bandwidth and a plug-and play-interface.
The first Grasshopper3 model, GS3-U3-28S4 (colour and monochrome), has a maximum frame rate of 26 frames per second (FPS) and features the Sony 2.8 megapixel (MP), ICX687 CCD sensor with its image quality and near infrared (IR) response. This is made possible by Sony’s proprietary pixel structure and micro-lens design, which improves photon-to-electron conversion at each photodiode. Improving quantum efficiency increases light sensitivity when compared to a pixel with the same well depth or saturation capacity.
Subsequent Grasshopper3 models are also based on CCD and include another 2.8MP variant, as well as 6MP and 9.1MP models. Like all Point Grey USB 3.0 cameras, the Grasshopper3 is built on a field programmable gate array (FPGA) and frame buffer-based architecture to provide reliability, a rich set of features and a full image-processing pipeline, including colour interpolation, lookup table, gamma correction, pixel binning functionality and more.
According to Michael Gibbons, director of sales and marketing for Point Grey, the Grasshopper3’s use of USB 3.0 makes it an alternative to Camera Link and dual gigabit Ethernet (GigE) link aggregate group (LAG) solutions. He also lists a broad range of applications for the Grasshopper3, including print inspection, 3D measurement, flow scanning cytometry, fluorescence imaging and more.
The Grasshopper3 model GS3-U3-28S4 is available now.
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