Maxvideo Hardware
This is the real-time image processing system. A class in itself.
And as of 9/2000 pretty close to totally dead as far as uasability goes.
There are two sets of hardware around.
The first is a lot of MV10 series boards,
mostly defunct, and in the process of being decommissioned.
These are programmed using what amounts to assembly code done via
a set of c interface routines called MaxWare combined with physical rewiring.
The second is the newer MV200 which
has a (slightly) higher-level language called image-flow
associated with it, and enough internal multiplexing to eliminate the
need to plug and unplug (and break and debug) bus cables.
These boards do convolution, simple arithmetic, table lookup,
histogramming, etc on pipelined images a frame rates or better.
If you want to do real-time vision you might consider using them, though
the new machines are getting pretty snappy for anything that does not
have to be done at frame rates.
They are also another way (at one time the only way) we have of getting images
directly into the Suns from our cameras.
The machine they go into however, Granite, is getting pretty old
(it's a Sun4) so there is probably not much point in this anymore.
R. Nelson is local expert on the old MV10 boards, Jim Vallino and Garbis
Salgian were the last experts on the MV200.
There are also manuals around.
Jim has a program /u/vallino/vision/bin/freeze that gets iff images
from the MV200. It will basically walk you through the setup.
No on-line help, except for an old program called rs_io
which provides a way to produce iff images from a camera using the MV10 boards.
You have to be on Granite to use this.
The boards are old, and don't always initialize right, so if you are
getting mysterious errors, it may not be your fault.
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