Bi-i Ultra High-Speed Smart Cameras

The Bi-i product line is a family of intelligent cameras with ultra high-speed image processing capability. Built upon our core technologies, the Bi-i cameras are ideally suited to applications requiring standalone operation and real-time performance on tasks too complex to handle with normal cameras and processors.

The newest member of the Bi-i family, the Bi-i v301 brings the same cutting-edge technology pioneered for US government agencies and research universities to a wide range of commercial and security tasks, and together with the InstantVision image processing libraries, substantially reduces the time and cost of developing perfectly customized vision applications.

Unlike a standard camera system, which requires a host computer with a frame grabber card attached, and uses the host computer to process the captured images, Bi-i is a completely standalone system, which interacts with other devices via standard communication channels like TCP/IP, RS-232 and so on.

The central processing element of Bi-i is a Digital Signal Processor (DSP) by Texas Instruments. Application programs are executed by the DSP (with the help of an optional floating-point co-processor) plus the optional ACE16k_v2 sensor-processor (Bi-i V2) from AnaFocus, which is controlled by the DSP. Communication (Ethernet, RS-232 and USB) is handled by a dedicated processor running applications under the Linux operating system.

Application development for Bi-i is supported by a software environment which includes a C++ SDK for Code Composer Studio by Texas Instruments, as well as a Windows and Linux API for communication with a host PC. The native programming environment of Bi-i is also available for fast prototyping. Our platform-independent InstantVision image processing libraries provide standard image processing functions as well as functions for multi-target tracking, feature classification, and signal and image flow, three capabilities unique to Bi-i.

Programs written in Matlab (by Mathworks Inc.) can also be incorporated into Bi-i applications, as can algorithms developed using the Simulink package of Matlab. Once a standalone application is developed, it can run on the Bi-i without the need for a host machine or any of the development tools mentioned above.

Select a link to read more about the specific versions of the Bi-i intelligent camera: (Bi-i V2, Bi-i V301, Bi-i V301F)