Progressive-scan cameras capture moving objects

A Sony Europe - Image Sensing Solutions product story

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team May 12, 2006

Sony Europe's Image Sensing Solutions Division has expanded its range of colour block cameras with the announcement of the industry's first progressive-scan modules with digital output.

Sony Europe's Image Sensing Solutions Division has expanded its range of colour block cameras with the announcement of the industry's first progressive-scan modules with digital output.

The FCB-PV480 and FCB-PV10 cameras also include an autofocus zoom lens (18x and 10x respectively), providing a unique combination of features for applications ranging from security to videoconferencing equipment.

The use of progressive scan techniques to eliminate interlace effects will make the FCB-PV series a particularly attractive alternative for users who need to capture high-quality images of moving objects; and for those who need to view footage in slow motion or acquire still images from video.

Progressive scan capture also simplifies the processing in intelligent surveillance applications, such as motion detection, tracking, automatic number plate recognition (ANPR), face recognition or people counting.

The modules can capture VGA resolution images at illuminations as low as 1.6 lux, thanks to the use of Super HAD CCDs with primary colour filters and approximately 300,000 square pixels.

They also offer a wide field of view of up to 48 degrees.

The FCB-PV480 and FCB-PV10 are designed to integrate easily into security domes, police vehicles, photo booths, ID badging units, document stands, intelligent surveillance applications and videoconferencing systems.

They provide digital output in six selectable YUV 4:2:2 formats, and a high-speed serial interface running at up to 38.4Kbit/s with TTL signal-level control via the VISCA protocol.

When combined with a USB or IEEE1394 convertor board, they can be directly connected to a PC or digital encoder, for use in networked applications such as CCTV-over-IP.

The new modules incorporate a spherical privacy zone masking function that ensures conformance to national and international privacy requirements for security use, and is an essential feature for dome cameras used in wide-area monitoring applications.

It allows masking to be automatically interlocked with the camera's tilt, pan and zoom operations regardless of camera angle, automatically adjusts the sise of the masked area as the zoom is operated, and can keep masked areas covered even when the camera is circling.

The FCB-PV480 and FCB-PV10 also feature an electronic flip (E-Flip) function that can electronically invert an image so that it is displayed correctly, a particularly useful facility in situations when a camera dome system is tracking an object which then moves directly beneath it.

They provide electronic shutter/slow shutter features, switchable frame rate of 29.97 or 25frame/s, and low power consumption of 1.6W.

An electronic alarm function can detect changes in the auto-focus or auto-exposure levels of an image (or both), allowing the automation of functions such as sounding an audible alarm or activating an electronic door strike in response to changes in focus or luminance levels.

A spot AE function also permits users to generate an alarm in response to light intensity changes in multiple detecting areas within the image.

Both the FCB-PV480 and FCB-PV10 are available immediately.