Integration of a dual-band IR data acquisition system using low-cost PV320 cameras

摘要

The Electrophysics PV320 is a broadband thermal imaging system with several attractive features including low cost (about USD 25K including optics and software), small size, uncooled operation with a BST sensor array, spectral response from 0.6 to 14 μm, easily interchangeable warm optics, and on board USB 2.0 digital video output. In this paper we describe the technical challenges that were involved in integrating together two copies of the PV320L2Z camera variant to create an experimental dual-band IR data acquisition system for measuring targets, backgrounds, and clutter. The PV320 manufacturer-supplied software includes a user friendly, all-in-one application as well as software development kits providing camera control routines that are callable from C++, Visual Basic, and Lab View. While this software works well for operating a single PV320 camera, it does not provide any direct support for simultaneously imaging with multiple cameras. The main technical issues are that the base software driver can connect to only one camera at a time and that multiple instances of the driver cannot be loaded simultaneously. Therefore, to achieve our goal of acquiring dual-band IR signatures, it was necessary to program a custom distributed algorithm capable of running two copies of the driver simultaneously on two separate computers with one PV320L2Z connected to each.