SEPTEMBER 25--Integral Technologies (Indianapolis, IN; www.integraltech.com) has unveiled the FlashBus Prism, a multipurpose bus-mastering frame grabber for OEM applications. FlashBus Prism utilizes the Philips TriMedia VLIW (very long instruction word) processor and a 16-Mbyte SDRAM frame buffer for maximum flexibility in handling application requirements. The SDRAM frame buffer enables the processor to provide interpolated scaling, hardware overlay, real-time video rotation, and video output functionality. With multiple composite, S-Video, component video inputs, video output, and video capture, the FlashBus Prism frame grabber aids in image analysis, scientific imaging, microscopy, law enforcement, video surveillance, traffic control, and medical imaging, among others.
FlashBus Prism provides quality image capture from up to 4 RGB or YCrCb component, 8 S-Video, or 16 composite/monochrome video sources in NTSC or PAL format. Video can be captured and stored in either square pixel or CCIR-601 resolutions and can be scaled to any arbitrary size. Fast switching of up to 20 images per second between camera inputs is also possible for surveillance applications.
Video-output-source data are acquired from on-board memory, making it independent of the video input. This allows for video output not only from the currently viewed input video, but also from offscreen system memory. Graphics overlay can be added to the video image before going to the video output.
Power is delivered to the camera from the fused and switchable 12-V power supply. Camera operation is controlled by the RS-232 interface, or via the general-purpose input or output triggers to control specific camera functions such as exposure control, all through a single cable from the Prism DB-25 connector. The on-board microprocessor guarantees accurate synchronization and robust triggering without relying on the host CPU.
A software-developers kit is available that provides access to the features of the FlashBus Prism hardware. The kit includes DLLs for Microsoft Windows 9x, ME, NT 4.0, 2000, and XP operating systems. Source-code samples are included in both Visual C and Visual BASIC to provide insight to various hardware functions of FlashBus Prism. Samples include video-in-a-window, overlay, video buffering, camera control, and others.
