Custom TX2 Carrier Board for Embedded Vision Applications
The ability to use multiple cameras is an important requirement in many embedded vision applications. But most ARM boards have one or two USB3 input ports for controlling multiple machine vision cameras. Even when multiple USB3 ports are available, they usually share the same internal USB3 bus, severely limiting the maximum throughput of a system. Therefore, Flir introduces a custom TX2 carrier board.
The Machine Vision Custom TX2 Carrier Board with TX2 Module has dimensions of 138x92x18.2mm and will be released in mid-2021. (Bild: FLIR Systems GmbH)
For less demanding applications, where primary considerations are limited to keeping costs as low as possible and minimizing system footprint, a MIPI based camera may be able get the job done. However, if the application requires high quality images free from dead pixels, fixed pattern noise, or flat field artifacts, MIPI cameras do not have the features on board to correct them as machine vision cameras do. When using MIPI cameras, these corrections would need to be made on the ARM system. In applications with multiple cameras, correcting these image artefacts on the ARM system can become problematic, as you have more images to process simultaneously, in addition to all the processing needed to run your application. As such, to maximize the processing power available for an application, off-loading the image quality optimization to a capable MV camera is preferable. These cameras also provide other useful image processing capabilities including colour correction matrix, white balance correction, gamma correction and much more. The custom TX2 carrier board is designed with 4x connectors. Thanks to the TF38 connection, each camera would need just a single FPC cable for both power and image transmission eliminating the need for an external hub. Furthermore, each TF38 connection is derived from its own USB3 host controller, making each port capable of utilizing its full bandwidth. Even though the board is designed to support multiple USB3 buses, it retains an compact footprint at 138x92x18.2mm, of which the TX2 module itself covers 50x90mm. The Jetson TX2 is an ideal choice for a carrier board due to its track record for reliability, wide industry adoption, and high performance in comparison to other ARM boards. The module also comes in several variations (TX2 4G, TX2 8G).. The TX2 carrier boards will be released in mid-2021.
