Flexible Approach to Stable, Reliable LWIR Capabilities

Xenics, part of the Photonis group, has upgraded the CERES family of long-wave IR (LWIR) cameras to meet increasing demand for high performance, highly stable and reproducible temperature measurement. Two resolutions are offered: VGA (640×480) and SXGA (1280×1024), which allow for optimisation and are the best choices for industrial applications.

Operators using thermography for industrial applications focus on camera performance, but also request specific lenses that enable straightforward integration in their systems. Faced with demands such as wide area coverage with a focusing distance of less than a metre, for example, Xenics is introducing wide FOV options, for both VGA (95°, 50.8° and 24° FOV) and SXGA (71.7° and 47.8°).

The CERES T 640 and CERES T 1280 have been developed as a family, meaning they are compatible from both the control/command and electrical interface perspectives, enabling system upgrade or downgrade with minimal effort. Having been designed from the outset to be stable, reproducible and insensitive to ambient temperature changes, the family constitutes a one-of-a-kind solution for thermography in industrial application.

However, ultimate performance can only be achieved by calibrating the camera with its optics, which is where the addition of new optics options comes into play. Marc Larive, Strategic Marketing Director, explains. “In order to achieve ultimate thermographic performances, we have to properly select the lens for CERES T cameras. We thus add two new possibilities for customers with large FOV needs, for our VGA and SXGA products. Industrial customers can now perform thermography covering [a] large area at short distance, with a reasonable depth of focus and still with the same level of accuracy and reproducibility. This potentially helps them to increase their system throughput”.

The family also includes automatic compensation of internal temperature drift, making it very simple to use, avoiding additional long and complex calibration. Moreover, thermographic capabilities are embedded, with the ability to store two calibration packs. Designed for industrial use, the CERES T family interface is either GigE with PoE or CameraLink^, and is GenICam-compliant, which makes it straightforward to integrate. CERES T, like all Xenics cameras, benefit from the user-friendly Xeneth GUI and Xeneth SDK, which enable customers to save time in integrating the camera and focus efficiently on their added values: data analysis and process monitoring. Typical applications range from industrial to medical, in the latter case meeting the increasing requirement for resolution and simplicity, combined with short focus distance.