In 2000, the Camera Link standard was adopted as one of the first machine vision standards. Now more than 17 years old, it has seen some changes and several other standards have emerged and been adopted by the industry.
After more than twenty years of dutiful service in machine vision, Camera Link, USB 2.0 and FireWire have seen several industry changes and demands that may indicate that their days are limited. In fact, it was Steve Jobs who declared FireWire dead back in 2008, yet it is still somewhat prevalent in the industry. While prevalence can be good, it’s the new projects that are the lead indicator of market direction. In addition to these three, GigE Vision, 10GigE Vision and CLHS are other standards in the market that will be impacted by the future. While these older interfaces remain adequate for lower-end systems, CoaXPress and USB3 Vision have displaced them in today’s more demanding, high bandwidth applications. These two new heavyweights are engaged in a battle for global vision supremacy with the prize being millions of end-users’ dollars.