Line scan on steroids

Are Dalsa feeding their silicon performance-enhancing drugs? I ask this because, while browsing their web site a few days ago, I stumbled across the announcement of the new 12k 90kHz Piranha HS line scan camera. The specs are pretty stunning: as if a 12k TDI sensor isn’t enough, this thing runs at a line rate of 90kHz. That means it can squirt over 1 gigapixels of image data down the pipe every second.

To handle this data rate, Dalsa have put together their own communications “standard”, christened “HSLink”. Now I’m not sure what to think of this. I understand that with a camera of this performance, the framegrabber can become the weakest link, but isn’t the whole point of standards that everyone works to them? Dalsa say, “As a group we are working with the Camera Link 2 subcommittee to bring reference designs and a more complete specification to the table for industry use as the next generation Machine Vision interface.” But I’m not convinced. Call me old-fashioned but I’d rather vendors match their products to the standards than try to shape the standards to fit their products.

Incidentally, I checked the Basler web site to see if they have anything to compete. They offer higher line rates – 140kHz – but only in a 4K sensor, and their biggest sensor is 8K. So if you really need a 12,000 pixel sensor to run at 90kHz it seems you’ve no choice but to shop Dalsa.