Donal Waide

Machine vision cameras have crossed a threshold.

An exciting new application has emerged for the interface with great potential: running the unmodified CXP protocol over fiber optic lines instead of coaxial cable. Fiber’s high bandwidth, EMI immunity, durability, safety, and compact size make it an ideal addition to CoaXPress.

Integrators designing less demanding systems are staying the course with a well-established interface with a robust track record of handling large amounts of data easily and securely: Camera Link.

Until the CoaXPress v2.1 standard was released in 2021, the only physical medium between cameras, PCs, and frame grabbers for the CoaXPress (CXP) interface had been 75Ω coaxial cable. For most vision applications, the CXP 2.1 interface perfectly suited high-throughput inspection systems, quality control and factory automation needs. So, who would want to change that winning formula?

Launched in 2000 by the Automated Imaging Association, the Camera Link™ digital interface standard has stood the test of time.

Frame grabbers are essential components in machine vision systems that provide ultra high-speed, high-data image capture from one camera or multiple cameras simultaneously. 

Understandably, designers of high-throughput, multi-camera machine vision systems have grown dissatisfied with those aging standards and have found a new champion, CoaXPress (CXP), a high-speed, point-to-point, serial communications interface that runs data over off-the-shelf 75Ω coaxial cables.

Since its early days, machine vision has been primarily used to check the liquid level in a bottle, or verify if a packaging label is applied correctly.

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.