1stVision, Author at 1stVision Inc. - Machine Vision Articles

July 24, 2026July 24, 2026

Allied Vision FXO cameras to 100GigE and 671fps

Allied Vision FXO cameras are high-speed industrial GigE Vision cameras available with 10GigE, 25GigE, and 100GigE interfaces. Built around Sony Pregius S global shutter sensors, FXO cameras deliver high image quality, fast frame rates, low-latency image transfer, and reliable performance for demanding machine vision applications.

FXO 100 GigE cameras – Courtesy Allied Vision

Stable data for high-throughput metrology, semiconductor and industrial inspection

In semiconductor and electronics manufacturing, the FXO 100GigE cameras are suited for high-throughput 2D and 3D automated optical inspection because the global shutter supports fast motion without distortion and RDMA-based transport keeps data movement consistent under heavy loads.

In addition to metrology and industrial inspection, the FXO cameras are ideal for laser triangulation, 3D scanning and high-speed acquisition.

FXO 100GigE models at a glance – Courtesy Allied Vision

SVS-Vistek FXO cameras now part of Allied Vision – Courtesy Allied Vision

10, 25 and 100GigE FXO cameras

While the 100GigE models are the newest to join the product family, your application’s demands might be satisfied with 10GigE or 25GigE models. Even “just” the 10GigE models offer frame rates from 30 – 217fps, depending on sensor. Likewise the 25GigE models span 96 – 671fps. You wouldn’t be fishing in this pond unless framerate was a factor, but as with any engineering challenge, it’s the overall solution and fit that matters.

Click to contact — Give us a brief idea of your application – we will contact you to discuss options.

RDMA note

RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access) enables the host PC to directly access camera memory, avoiding memory copy to readout buffers, operating system overhead (time) costs, or CPU load. Special network adapters are required to support RDMA. But for demanding applications, where sustained high framerates are required, without missing data, RDMA can provide low-latency throughput.

Within the FXO family, all the 100GigE cameras support RDMA, and selected models of the 25GigE cameras offer RDMA. It’s not needed on the 10GigE models.

We have a blog on RDMA if you want to dive a bit deeper on your own.

About those network adapters

Unless you are new to machine vision, you already have some experience with network adapters aka NICs or network interface controller (or cards). They come in various flavors, according to PC host bus architecture, port count, protocol, bandwidth capacity, and budget.

For the Allied Vision FXO cameras, see suggested NICs according to camera model and throughput:

10GigE Dual port POE PCIe NIC card
25GigE 2-port SFP28 Interface Card for 25GigE
100GigE 2-port SFP28 Interface Card for 100 GigE

Plus a pair of transceivers

When using an RDMA camera model with fiber optic cable, you’ll also need a transceiver at both the camera and the PC host:

Key components for an RDMA data networking configuration – Courtesy Allied Vision

Transceiver: QFSP28 – you need on for each end, per diagram above

FXO camera highlights

Sony Pregius S sensors – Yes we mentioned it already above, but it bears repeating. These backlit sensors are highly sensitive, low noise, and with small pixel sizes.

Color, monochrome, and SWIR model options – while it’s common to find the color/mono options in the same product line, the SWIR option is rather distinctive. It creates potential efficiencies for multi-spectral applications.

Long cable runs to multi-kilometer distances – QSFP28 (Quad Small Form-factor Pluggable) interface enables distances up to multiple kilometers between your PC host and the camera, via fiber.

Advanced thermal design – dissipates heat effectively to maintain low noise high-quality images.

Does your application require 25 or 100 GigE bandwidth to sustain your target image sizes and framerates? Start with application requirements and work back to sensor, camera, interface, cabling, etc. We’re here to help.

1st Vision’s sales engineers have over 100 years of combined experience to assist in your camera and components selection. With a large portfolio of cameras, lenses, cables, NIC cards and industrial computers, we can provide a full vision solution!

About you: We want to hear from you! We’ve built our brand on our know-how and like to educate the marketplace on imaging technology topics… What would you like to hear about?… Drop a line to info@1stvision.com with what topics you’d like to know more about.

#AlliedVision

#FXO

#100GigE

#Machinevision

July 24, 2026July 24, 2026

What is RDMA?

Remote Direct Memory Access – RDMA – is a data transfer method supporting greater throughput compared to traditional transfer methods. While it’s been used in data centers and by networking innovators for some years, it’s only recently been made available for machine vision.

In a phrase: RDMA is a method of transferring data directly between a device and a designated area of computer memory with little involvement from the operating system and CPU.

Some image transfer context to motivate the need for RDMA

Cameras doing real time machine vision don’t send entire images in a single file – it’s not like jpg images from a smartphone. Rather, sensor data is read out in pixel values conveyed in bytes in turn assembled into packets. The operating system, CPU, and networking protocol move the packets and assemble the image in the PC host.

At “conventional” GigE speeds like 1GigE, 5GigE, and 10GigE, a regular NIC and your PC host processor can typically keep up with the framerates flowing from the camera to the PC and vision application software.

But at 25GigE and especially 100GigE, which you may need for your high framerate application, the CPU might get so overwhelmed with data copy and network protocol management that not enough CPU cycles remain for image processing per se. Which in turn risks frame loss and latency bottlenecks.

An analogy

Suppose a package has to get to a specific recipient’s desk in a mid-town office building or on a large industrial campus with multiple buildings and departments. One method would be to get it from the external shipper to a receiving department. Who then transport it to the department level. Who then get it to the business unit. And finally to the intended individual. It works. But it’s a lot of handling, each of which has a cost in labor and time and hence efficiency. That’s equivalent to the traditional network packetization and delivery approach.

The RDMA-equivalent approach would be to authorize the external delivery service (once suitably credentialed) to deliver the parcel directly to the intended desktop, without all the intermediate handling steps.

RDMA at a glance

Recall that GigE Vision utilizes GVSP – GigE Vision Streaming Protocol. Which in turn depends on UDP – User Datagram Protocol. Which is built on top of network layer IP – Internet Protocol. GigE Vision 3.0 added an RDMA-based streaming option, GVRSP, for applications that need higher data rates and less CPU overhead.

Translating that into conventional GigE data transfer, there are typically the four layers shown in the left-hand side of the diagram below: Application, Socket, Transfer Protocol, and Driver level. All those are abstracted away from the user/programmer by your GigE Vision compliant camera, NIC, and SDK – but the layers are all in there. And the successive handoffs between the layers, at both the transmission and receiving side, require communications handoffs and data buffering. Which incurs performance costs in time as well as processor load.

Reduce number of handling instances with RDMA increases throughput – Courtesy Allied Vision

Reduced buffering and handoffs with RDMA

Now look at the right-hand side of the diagram above, utilizing RDMA. Three handoff and two buffering layers are bypassed, yielding substantial throughput gains. Just as with traditional GigE Vision, the user/programmer does not have to manage data transport. Your device manufacturers and SDK provider take of that for you. But you get to harvest the performance gains.

Zero-copy

As you get into RDMA, you may see the “zero-copy” characteristic touted as a benefit. Don’t be confused by the term “copy”. It doesn’t mean conventional networking makes duplicate copies. Merely that conventional networking has to move a packet from one buffer to another, so it copies to the new and releases the old. It’s the “reduced handling instances” concept illustrated in the diagram above.

Key benefits

Higher sustained throughput – host PC doesn’t get bogged down

Lower CPU utilization – frees up capacity for image processing

Lower latency and jitter – image delivery faster and regularized

Improved stability – avoids dropped packets or frames

Putting the pieces together

If your application requires the performance delivered by RDMA, despite being a GigE protocol, one uses fiber cables instead of conventional Cat6 ethernet cables. One must convert between copper and glass fiber transmission modes at both the transmission and receiving ends. Hence the transceivers as shown in the illustration below.

Key components for a machine vision RDMA setup – Courtesy Allied Vision

How long a fiber run do you need?

There are transceivers designed for several different throughput and cable length requirements. Costs scale accordingly. But innovative machine vision solutions that bring competitive advantage can drive revenue or reduce other costs, so it’s partly about engineering possibilities and partly about cost : benefit calculation.

Transceivers for different bandwidth and cable length requirements – Courtesy Allied Vision

Note: the multi-km cable lengths are a benefit of fiber optics, not of RDMA per se. It’s a happy coincidence that RDMA performance at 25 and 100GigE is best supported by fiber optics; and that once a signal is on fiber, and can be reliably transmitted a long distance.

Do you need 25 or 100 GigE? Fiber optic cables? RDMA? Start with required application outcomes in terms of image characteristics and framerate, and work back to sensor, camera, interface, and techniques. We do that.

#RDMA

#Remotedirectmemoryaccess

July 24, 2026July 24, 2026

RGB / NIR applications with DALSA Linea Multispectral

Multispectral imaging, in general terms, creates solutions that draw on spectral response from two or more regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. So it might be UV+VIS or VIS+IR, for example. And VIS might be monochrome (with or without filters) or color. And IR might be any of NIR, SWIR, MWIR, or LWIR. If you can add value and competitive advantage through an application built on a multispectral approach, there are cameras, sensors, lenses, filters, and lighting to support your design.

Traditionally one would need two different cameras to create a multispectral solution. That’s because most cameras are designed around a sensor that is optimized for just one portion of the spectrum. While there are good reasons behind cameras that “specialize” on just a segment of the spectrum, it creates multi-camera integration challenges for those who want to build multispectral solutions. Until now…

RGB / NIR with DALSA Linea ML-FC-08K07N

Take a look at the response curve below. The 8K DALSA proprietary CMOS sensor used in the Linea ML-FC-08K07N camera performs well on both sides of 700 nm. To the left it’s responsive in the VIS portion of the spectrum, from 400 – 700 nm. And to the right it does well in NIR, from 800 – 1000 nm. That’s an unusual and powerful range.

Applications potential

Banknote and secure documents inspection: The visible inspection handles geometric feature checks, while NIR looks for special inks that appear only in those wavelengths.

Semiconductor wafer and PCB inspection: Find defects below the surface with NIR. While doing surface inspection in VIS.

Multisource imaging

Suppose you need to capture both brightfield and darkfield images of the same linescan continuous target. While one could set up two different cameras, calculate offset timing based on motion characteristics, and integrate or compare images on the host…

… with multiple strobed light sources… and the DALSA ML 8K camera sensitive to both VIS and NIR, the same camera can capture both brightfield and darkfield images in a single pass.

Courtesy Teledyne DALSA

Key features include:

8,192×4 multiline trilinear color & NIR CMOS line scan sensor

Camera Link HS Fiber interface*

75kHz scan rate

72dB dynamic range

(*) Linea ML is DALSA’s first camera with native fiber optic connectors. No adapters or converters required. Fiber has two key advantages: (1) long cable runs beyond copper cable performance; (2) immunity to electrical interference

CLHS native fiber interface – Courtesy Teledyne DALSA

Linea Multispectral Line scan – Courtesy Teledyne DALSA

Line scan and multispectral imaging are both a bit more obscure than area scan machine vision. But each incredibly powerful, either alone or in combination. We’d be delighted to understand your application goals and constraints, to help you determine solution options.

#Multispectral

#LineaML

July 6, 2026July 6, 2026

How to eliminate glare in machine vision systems

Machine vision – indeed human vision too – relies heavily on contrast. The feature(s) being identified need to stand out against any competing candidate features. Otherwise confusion is present. Which means vision either doesn’t work, or isn’t efficient.

While it’s easy to achieve good contrast in certain machine vision applications, sometimes we’re presented with the special challenges of glare. The target object is the same, in the two images below. If the goal is to read the alphanumeric information, which image would you rather pass to your machine vision software?

Techniques to eliminate glare

Glare can arise due to highly reflective surfaces, especially in combination with the direction of the light source relative to the lens and sensor capturing the image. Thankfully there are a number of techniques to eliminate or substantially reduce glare.

Off-axis lighting

For the 1-D bar code reading application illustrated below, moving the light to an off-axis position creates dark field orientation, eliminating the glare. Identical materials but different geometry does the trick!

a. Lighting diagram; b. High-angle light reflects from specular surface; c. Off-axis light improves the image; Courtesy Advanced Illumination

Diverse lights and geometries

Consider another example. In this case we have a titration tray, with multiple wells. Each well has a laser-etched 2-D code.

Analysis/discussion below. Courtesy Advanced Illumination

(a) the titration tray at low resolution, marked up with red outline around 6 wells isolated in high resolution images (b) – (f)
(b) High-angle ring light
(c) Coaxial light
(d) Dark field ring light
(e) Diffuse dome light
(f) Flat diffuse light

In this scenario, both (d) the dark field ring light, and (f) the flat diffuse light, are far superior to the other options, and the flat diffuse light is the winner.

Flat diffuse light function diagram – light is directed downward, and more off-axis than a coaxial illuminator, yet less off-axis contribution than a dome light. Courtesy Advanced Illumination

NOTE: The example above is NOT meant to suggest that flat diffuse light is always the winner. It’s important to understand the characteristics of the surface you are inspecting, and each candidate type of lighting, and the geometric options. And to test!

Guideline

The following diagram is a general guideline, based upon the two most prevalent surface characteristics: (1) Surface flatness and texture, and (2) Surface reflectivity profile

Guide to likely “best approach” based on prevalent surface characteristics – Courtesy Advanced Illumination

Send your samples

Lighting is a complex topic, so we’re happy to help. If you are uncertain which light type to choose and how to configure, we may be able to do some testing for you. Contact us to arrange sending samples to test in our lab, and we can recommend sensor, lensing, lighting, and configuration options.

For comprehensive coverage on glare reduction – and more – download A Practical Guide to Machine Vision lighting from our knowledge base.

#glare

#contrast

#machinevisionlighting

#diffuser

#polariser