Point Grey announced the launch of its new Flea3 FL3-GE series of GigE Vision digital cameras.

The Flea3 GigE camera series sets a new industry standard with an ultra-compact size of just 29 x 29 x 30 millimeters, making it the world's smallest Gigabit Ethernet camera. The first available models use monochrome and color versions of the popular Sony ICX445 CCD, a high sensitivity 1.3 megapixel 1/3-inch EXview HAD image sensor that runs at 30 FPS. The Flea3 offers superior imaging performance and a host of new features, including opto-isolated GPIO for industrial triggering and strobe output, non-volatile flash memory for user data storage, and on-camera frame buffer.

"We are very excited to launch the Flea3 GigE series, which will provide customers with a unique combination of size, performance, and price," says Vladimir Tucakov, Director of Sales and Marketing at Point Grey. Tucakov adds, "Point Grey has a history of bringing innovative and ground-breaking products to market. This drive for innovation has led to many industry firsts, including the world's first and smallest FireWire-b cameras. With Flea3 we're pushing technology boundaries again by providing three different interfaces-FireWire, GigE, and soon USB 3.0-in the same small, ice-cube form factor."

Every Flea3 GigE camera is equipped with an industry-standard C-mount lens holder, removable IR cut filter (color models) / optical window (monochrome models), and a 12-bit analog-to-digital converter. Additional features include automatic control of most camera properties, such as gain, exposure, and white balance; user configuration sets for defining custom power-up settings; gamma and programmable lookup table; customizable region of interest settings; and pixel binning. The Flea3 also complies with version 1.2 of the GigE Vision specification, which allows it to be used with many third-party software packages. Included with every camera is the FlyCapture SDK, a full software library that provides a common control interface for all Point Grey cameras under both Windows and Linux.

The Flea3 FL3-GE-13S2 (1/3-inch 1.3 MP 30 FPS), list priced at USD $765, is available to order now from Point Grey and its network of distributors. Additional GigE Vision models are planned to be released throughout 2011.