Smart camera development kit comes in a small form factor

Engineers at D3 Engineering (Rochester, NY, USA), New Scale Technologies (Victor, NY, USA) and Sunex (Carlsbad, CA, USA) have created a new OEM Smart Camera Developer's Kit.

D3 Engineering, a Platinum Member of the Texas Instruments (TI) Design Network, created the system by integrating TI's DaVinci DM6437 video processor with the M3-F focus module from New Scale Technologies.

The M3-F module uses patented closed-loop piezoelectric smart actuator technology to control the autofocus of a lens in a form factor approximately 1" cubed. It is powerful enough to move lenses up to 5 grams, allowing the use of both glass and polymer materials.

Users can customize their kits by choosing from a wide range of standard and custom lenses from Sunex. Sunex offers lenses with patented aspheric optical technology, proprietary high-index optical materials and integral optical filters.

Kits can also be customized with the user's choice of image sensor from Aptina (San Jose, CA, USA), OmniVision (Santa Clara, CA, USA) and others.

Daughtercard connections allow access to all processor peripherals and GPIO for prototyping and evaluation.

For production, D3 Engineering will configure the electronics to meet specific OEM requirements for functionality and even smaller form factors.

Details and specifications can be found here.

-- By Dave Wilson, Senior Editor, Vision Systems Design