Balluff - BVS CA-BN Technical Documentation
Working with binning / decimation

With binning / decimation it is possible to combine / reduce adjacent pixels vertically and/or horizontally. Depending on the sensor, up to 16 adjacent pixels can be combined / reduced.

See also
https://assets.balluff.com/documents/DRF_957352_AA_000/Binning_modes.png

To optimize the sensor speed, the firmware will check if the binning / decimation functionality is provided by the sensor. If it is available it will use the sensor for binning / decimation, if not, binning / decimation will be processed in the camera's FPGA.

If a binning / decimation combination is not possible, the following note will be displayed:

In this case no acquired images will be displayed until you have changed the settings.

Binning

Possible binning modes are:

  • Sum: The response from the combined pixels will be added, resulting in increased sensitivity.
  • Average: The response from the combined pixels will be averaged, resulting in increased signal/noise ratio.

Binning can be used to lighten the image at the expense of the resolution. This is a neat solution for applications with low light and low noise.

The following results were achieved with the BVS CA-SF2-0124ZG / mvBlueFOX3-2124G:

Exposure [in us] Binning Gain [in dB] Averager
2500 - 0 -
Exposure [in us] Binning Gain [in dB] Averager
2500 - 30 -
Exposure [in us] Binning Gain [in dB] Averager
2500 2H 2V 30 -
Exposure [in us] Binning Gain [in dB] Averager
2500 2H 2V 30 Averaging using 24 frames

Decimation

Possible decimation modes are:

  • Discard: The value of every Nth pixel is kept, others are discarded.
  • Average: The value of a group of N adjacent pixels are averaged.