Image sensor evaluation kits fuel miniature camera designs

By Gina Roos, editor-in-chief

ams has launched the NanoVision and NanoBerry evaluation kits, a ready-made platform for the development of consumer products based on the ams NanEyeC miniature image sensor. The NanEyeC camera  is a full-featured image sensor supplied in a 1 x 1-mm surface-mount module, providing 100-k pixel resolution up to 58 frames/s.

Thanks to its small size, high image quality, and high frame rate, the NanEyeC can be used for video applications in which the camera must be invisible to the end user, or needs to fit in an extremely small space. Potential applications include eye tracking in virtual reality headsets as well as user presence detection to support automatic power on/off controls in home and building automation (HABA) applications such as air conditioning, home robotics, appliances and smart lighting.

The NanoVision demo kit for the NanEyeC is based on an Arduino development platform. It includes all necessary drivers to interface the sensor’s single-ended interface mode (SEIM) output to an Arm Cortex-M7 microcontroller. It also supports image processing, which includes functions such as color reconstruction and white-point balancing. The support package can accelerate the development of low frame-rate applications like presence detection within the Arduino hardware development environment, said ams.

Designed for more demanding operations like eye tracking or stereo vision systems, the NanoBerry evaluation kit uses a NanEyeC image sensor add-on board to the Raspberry Pi port, and includes firmware to interface to the Raspberry Pi host processor. The NanoBerry board includes a high performance Arm Cortex-A53-based processor to perform more demanding operations such as object detection, object tracking, and computer vision functions provided by the OpenCV library, said ams, and is well suited for high frame-rate and low-latency applications.

Integration into the NanEye PC viewer enables full evaluation of the NanEyeC with access to all registers and raw image data, said ams. The NanoVision board is available now to customers on request.

ams will demonstrate the NanoBerry kit at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January 2020. The kit will be available to customers in Q1 2020.