Dalsa Corporation announced a new Gigabit Ethernet ready Vision Appliance called Geva, which stands for GigE Vision Appliance. Compatible with the full range of Dalsa Genie and Spyder3 cameras, Geva offers a cost-effective and expandable performance platform for a multitude of industrial inspection tasks.

The Geva platform offers excellent cost savings for multi-camera vision applications, such as final inspection of large assemblies. The high bandwidth GigE camera ports are compatible with a wide range of mono or color, area and line scan GigE cameras, which can be mixed to suit the application need. Camera expansion is easily accommodated using commercially available network technologies, allowing large configurations to be realized with much lower system cost. At the heart of Geva is a powerful multi-core processor, equipped with high-speed memory resources to tackle the most demanding applications.

"Our new Geva platform delivers excellent processing performance and significantly reduces system costs for multiple camera installations," says Steve Geraghty, Director of Dalsa's Industrial Products. "Geva hardware flexibility, combined with Dalsa's iNspect and Sherlock software tools, comprise a very powerful vision solution that can be applied to a great number of applications."

Geva provides a number of external interfaces for system integration. It includes dedicated display and USB ports for setup and run-time control, a third Gigabit Ethernet port and a serial port for factory communication, dedicated trigger inputs for inspection timing, dedicated strobe outputs for lighting control, and opto-isolated I/O for associated equipment interfacing.

Vision solutions on Geva are setup using Dalsa's iNspect or Sherlock application software. The iNspect software requires little or no prior vision experience, while the Sherlock software offers greater flexibility to tackle more challenging inspection tasks. Both packages offer a full complement of tools, together with interfacing and control options for both users and equipment. For performance migration, applications built on other Dalsa equipment with the same camera setup will also run on Geva. Both software packages offer a wide selection of tools and capabilities for applications requiring positioning, identification, verification, measurement, and flaw detection. For machine builders with unique needs, Geva is available complete with camera drivers for integration with third party software.