Balluff - BVS CA-GT Technical Documentation
Sensor Overview

Image data flow

The following block diagrams show the data flow of the image data after being read from the sensor chip in the camera. The transfer latency (stream controller + frame buffer + resend buffer + packet generator) of the data is less than 100 us.

Figure 1: Block diagram gray scale sensors
Figure 2: Block diagram color sensors

Debayering of color sensors (RGB Bayer)

For Bayer demosaicing in the camera, we use our "Adaptive Edge Sensing Plus" method. I.e. "Adaptive Edge Sensing Plus" detects edges, filters and sharpens them depending on the location. It tries to reconstruct the green channel based on a gradient. Afterwards, it creates the differences between red and green, and blue and green, interpolates the values and adds the green values again. The second path below adds a high path filter, an amplifier, and a threshold to the Bayer data.

The advantages of the "Adaptive Edge Sensing Plus" method are:

  • Very few false colors
  • No alias effects
  • Sharp edges
  • Low noise

On the host side, the "Adaptive Edge Sensing Plus" method needs 20 % CPU load.

Figure 3: Debayering with Adaptive Edge Sensing Plus

Supported image formats

It depends on the sensor model which image formats are actually supported.

The parameter PixelFormat in the ImageFormatControl lists all the supported image formats of the specific camera model. In ImpactControlCenter you can find the PixelFormat parameter in "Setting → Base → Camera → GenICam → Image Format Control → Pixel Format".

Gray scale version Color version
Mono8
Mono16
Mono12Packed
  BayerRG8
  BayerRG12Packed
  BayerRG16
  RGB8
  BGR8
  BGRa8
  YUV422_8_UYVY
  YUV8_UYV
  YUV422_8
See also
For more details about the image formats, please have a look at the enums TImageDestinationPixelFormat (C++) and TImageBufferPixelFormat (C++) in the Impact Acquire API manuals.
An example application about the pixel formats called ContinuousCaptureAllFormats is also available.

CMOS sensors

Summary of CMOS sensors