While shopping for an industrial vision application, many types of connectivity options will be on display. We are fortunate enough to have many options available to us. With wide choices at your disposal, you can pick and choose the right combination of data integrity, transmission length, bandwidth and customization for your industrial camera application.

This article will deal with two such technologies – Gigabit Ethernet Gige and FireWire IEEE-1394. These two technologies are widely used for a number of applications like: Automotive, Food Processing, Bioscience, Traffic, Machine vision, Surveillance and many more.

FireWire is also referred to as IEEE-1394.It offers high bandwidth interface for consumer electronics products, peripherals and computers.IEEE-1394 came into being in the late 80s as a digital technology which was designed to cater the ever increasing demand for increased bandwidth for videos.

It was widely employed to reduce the number of cables and connectors used between different devices and to simplify the entire setup. FireWire technology is based on serial bus architecture which is similar to USB. They are generally used to network digital video cameras with computers.

There are 2 types of FireWire versions available. They are IEEE 1394.a and IEEE 1394.b.The difference between the two lies in the bandwidth offered. While the former offers bandwidth of 480 Mbps, the latter offers the bandwidth of 800 Mbps. This comes as a close competitor to its nearest rival, Gigabit Ethernet Gige, which offers 1000 Mbps of bandwidth.

As the name suggests, Gigabit Ethernet is an industrial camera interface developed by Gigabit Ethernet communication protocol. They are also referred to as GigE. GigE camera used for industrial purposes give the users the option of high speed data transfer and cable lengths compared to FireWire. They were among the first technology to be used to transfer 1000 Mbps of data using inexpensive cables of lengths up to 100 meters.

If you want to choose among the two for your Machine Vision applications, then the industrial FireWire camera will go you an edge over the GigE. This is because, FireWire will offer you better software interface, the computer interface, higher degree of standardization for hardware and their costs are also comparatively lesser.

Advantages offered by Industrial FireWire cameras:

a) Less expensive cables

b) The software interface associated with these cameras has the ability to comply with any driver

c) PCE interface can be procured from your nearby computer retailer for few dollars, in case your computer doesn’t have a built in FireWire port.

d) Framegrabber costs are minimal

e) The offerings and maturity of the software makes this technology a good long term investment.

Advantages offered by GigE

a) Faster transfer speed

b) Cable lengths offered are up to 100 meters. This is much higher as compared to 5 meters offered by FireWire.

c) Its becoming a dominant force with Machine Vision Interface as the technology progresses.

Though these two technologies are good in their own areas, GigE has got an overall package which it puts it a bit front of FireWire. The former is a relatively newer technology and will take some more time in getting settled down. But once settled it could take over the entire industrial vision applications.

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