Allied Vision integrates Sony 1^st generation IMX global shutter sensors with Pregius sensor Technology into its Alvium camera portfolio. With the new camera models, the Sony IMX249 sensor is now also available in Alvium cameras with either GigE Vision (Alvium G1-234), USB3 Vision (Alvium U-234), or MIPI CSI-2 (Alvium C-234) interface. The faster Sony IMX174 Sensor has also been integrated into the Alvium USB3 Vision camera series (Alvium U-235) as well as into the Alvium CSI-2 camera series (Alvium C-235).

The IMX249 and IMX 174 sensors with a large pixel size of 5.86 µm are known for their saturation capacity of more than 30000e-. They can catch much light before saturating giving them a large dynamic range of 73dB. 

New camera models at a glance

CSI-2 cameras for embedded systems

Together with the hardware release, user of Alvium CSI-2 cameras can benefit from a new version of Allied Vision Software development Kit Vimba. As CSI-2 is a very streamlined protocol CSI-2 cameras require less processing time (CPU) on the host system due to low overhead making CSI-2 cameras particularly suitable for embedded systems. Compared to a USB camera, the CPU load can be reduced by up to 70%. Now the internal stream layout of Alvium CSI-2 cameras using GenICam for CSI-2 has been optimized. With the new Vimba 6.1 a further significant reduction of the CPU load on the host side can be achieved.

Along with Vimba 6.1 Allied Vision is releasing a new version of the Alvium CIS-2 driver 4 for NVIDIA Jetson, enabling the user to benefit from the Machine learning and AI capabilities of the latest NVIDIA^® Jetson™ systems.  With the released driver, NVIDIA Jetpack 4.6.1. is supported and NVIDIA Jetson TX2 NX is added to the list of supported Jetson systems. A beta version supporting NVIDIA Jetpack 5.0.2 is also available, so that designers of embedded system can already integrate Alvium CSI-2 cameras also into NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin based systems.