Sensor to Image GmbH is the specialist for OEM imaging hardware as for standard industrial vision products like cameras and framegrabbers.
Yesterday
The beginning of Sensor to Image Company goes back to the '80s (c't Framegrabber), a time when industrial image processing had still been in its infancy for lack of high-capacity computers. Nevertheless, the c’t Framegrabber achieved tangible results with the engineering office established by Werner Feith.
One of the first products included the image processing cards Snofru and Giseh which made it possible to evaluate a camera signal in a PC-dependent or even PC-independent manner and display it as a live video. These products were presented 1992 and development was going on towards PictureBoy and Kairo with the aim to push modular PC image processing cards for industrial purposes. These products offered at their time excellent possibilities such as onboard image processing and digitization of color cameras.
The arrival of the PCI technology in the world of PCs also had brought about image processing possibilities unattainable up to that time. Due to the data transfer rates in many cases still sufficient with PCIe today, more and more image processing tasks have been shifted onto the PC. From 1996 until today Sensor to Image has been supplying the necessary frame grabber of the Ramses series.
Since the establishment of Sensor to Image GmbH as it is today in 1999 there were some trends away from the PC and good niches for S2I towards intelligent image processing systems based on standard interfaces. These niches were taken into account of by the Single-Board computer Cleopatra, which has been maintained since today to run in a single chip ZYNQ FPGA with an 800MHZ ARM CPU. On of the niches, speed, was and is still important today, which ended in some significant FPGA project at S2I and lead to the standard FPGA interface core available today.
Today
In 2014 we accomplished the transition from traditional PCI(e) frame grabbers to video converters. Our product series GigE, CXP and U3V video converters are in series production now applicable by an extended temperature range from – 40°C to + 85°C. All of these converters are fully GenICam compliant and available with standard GenAPI and Gen TL interface. They represent the first product series available by Sensor to Image GmbH.
The intelligent cameras and embedded Linux, our second Sensor to Image product series, is still in operation, maintained and used by several OEM developments. These products are offered with CanCam-BF|ZQ, which integrates sensor, frame grabber and Linux-based evaluation computer with a minimum of requirements, even running complex software like HALCON on SVDK as a focused development platform.
Starting the core certification process of our GEV DEVICE in 2008 we are completely certified now as the only company worldwide by AIA as JIAA with GEV DEVICE/HOST, U3V DEVICE and CXP DEVICE/HOST FPGA cores in the latest version of specification for the FPGA vendors ALTERA, LATTICE and XILINX. We are working these days on a U3V FPGA HOST IP, FPGA IP to drive and readout Sony IMX sensors as GEV on NBase-T/5GBit bandwidth. The NBase-T IP is already accomplished and delivered to some customers. GEV on NBase-T DEVICE as HOST is today the leading edge product for our 3rd product family: industrial imaging interface IP.
Products based on our three standard products as OS-, FPGA- and design services S2I products are used all over the world in automotive-, industrial-, medical-, security, military and space-applications in quantities of up to 100,000pieces/year and here is a geographical mapping of out IP customers in production.
As the team of Sensor to Image grew up the last years to 15 people it is a major goal in 2017 to extend the team furthermore and to enable the organization of S2I for continuity into the next years. The organic growth will be based on ongoing work with the three existing and exciting product series as specialized customer’s projects. To stay on top of technology of imaging Sensor to Image GmbH will again focus in 2017 on the GenICam based soft- as hardware standards to deliver advanced and well tested technology to our existing and new customers. As there are no established imaging components shows in 2017 this is one more reason to attend both GenICam meetings in 2017 in America and Japan, as we did in a consecutive row for the last 8 years.
All of our products are characterized by a high flexibility ensuring adaptation of the components to your requirements. Nearly every image processing application is different and calls for compatible components. With Sensor to Image you are free to choose to configure your application by yourself based on our standard products. On top of this we can offer to develop and manufacture it for you, as many years of developmental and practical experience enable us to offer you the following:
- fast adaptation and new developments of image processing components
- Hardware and software engineering on a maximum level
- Thorough market knowledge in the field of image processing hardware
- Supporting you in obtaining a competitive advantage by all means of image processing