Point Grey Research Announces 200 FPS Addition to the Grasshopper® Family

"One of our primary goals with the Grasshopper was to provide existing product users with a clear migration path toward our newer products," says Vladimir Tucakov, Director at Point Grey Research. "By adding support for the KAI-0340 sensor, Dragonfly Express camera users can now take full advantage of the features and benefits that come with the Grasshopper, such as its dual 1394b ports, on-camera frame buffer, and high speed 14-bit A/D converter. In addition, new users seeking an aggressively priced 200 FPS VGA FireWire camera will find these models to be an excellent solution for their imaging applications."

The Grasshopper camera line now offers a total of 11 different monochrome and color models that are designed to address a wide variety of customer demands for high resolution, high frame rate, and/or high sensitivity. Both monochrome and color models of the Kodak KAI-0340 CCD are available, and like other members of the Grasshopper family, are housed in a lightweight and compact 44x29x57.5mm enclosure with dual IEEE-1394b ports, general purpose I/O connector, and industry standard C-mount lens holder.

Key features of the Grasshopper camera include a frame buffer for image storage and retransmission, high-speed 14-bit analog-to-digital converter for data precision, memory channels for defining custom power-up settings, gamma and programmable LUT, and a data flash for non-volatile memory storage. Other standard features include multiple trigger and strobe modes, regions of interest and pixel binning, and in-field-updatable FPGA that controls all camera functions.

Like all Point Grey cameras, the Grasshopper complies with the IIDC DCAM v1.31 specification, which allows it to be used with many third-party software packages, such as those from Cognex®, Matrox®, MVTec™, and National Instruments®. Also included with every camera is the FlyCapture® SDK—a full software package for image acquisition and advanced camera control—and the FirePRO™ driver, which enables users to grab images at full 800Mb/s transfer rates.

The following models are available now from Point Grey Research and its network of distributors:

GRAS-50S5M/C (5.0MP 2/3” ICX625 CCD, 15 FPS, mono/color)
GRAS-20S4M/C (2.0MP 1/1.8” ICX274 CCD, 30 FPS, mono/color)
GRAS-14S5M/C (1.4MP 2/3” ICX285 CCD, 15 FPS, mono/color)
GRAS-14S3M/C (1.4MP 1/2” ICX267 CCD, 21 FPS, mono/color)
GRAS-03S3M (0.3MP 1/2” ICX414 CCD, 74 FPS, monochrome only)
GRAS-03K2M/C (0.3MP 1/3” KAI-0340 CCD, 200 FPS, mono/color)

About Point Grey Research, Inc.

Point Grey Research is a worldwide leader in the development of advanced digital camera technology products. With a network of distributors throughout the world, Point Grey Research designs, manufactures and distributes IEEE-1394 cameras, stereo vision cameras and spherical digital video cameras to a broad spectrum of industries. Through a close working relationship with its customers, Point Grey continues to be at the forefront of innovation.