The Concept of Applets
Silicon Software frame grabbers are always equipped with at least one Field Programming Gate Array (FPGA).
An applet is an application that runs on the frame grabber's FPGA . An applet comprises
- FPGA firmware for image acquisition and image processing, and
- Software libraries and interfaces that abstract the access to the FPGA implementation.
Thus, the applet is the connecting piece between SDK, frame grabber, and camera. The applet defines
- what happens on the FPGA
- how the SDK communicates with the frame grabber (defining, for example, which parameters are available)
An applet is tailored for a specific interface, a specific group of cameras, or even a specific field of application. You define the functionality of your frame grabber (Vision Processor) via the applet you select for use on your frame grabber.
Once you load an applet on your grabber, the frame grabber offers the functionality defined in the applet.
On Silicon Software frame grabbers, you can use two kinds of applets:
1. Applets provided by Silicon Software.
Acquisition Applets: Silicon Software offers a broad range of ready-made applets. Each of those has been optimized for a specific frame grabber functionality, taking into account specifics such as interfaces, camera types (area or line, color or gray), image optimization requirements, data rates, etc.
2. Applets you can build yourself.
You can also design and build applets yourself to realize application-specific image pre-processing that matches the requirements of your specific use case. To enable you to program and actually build such applets, Silicon Software offers a graphical programming environment: VisualApplets. In VisualApplets, you can design a hardware program (applet) for your frame grabber like in a data flow tool. No HDL language is required. This allows specialists from various fields - software engineers, vision experts, etc. - to create hardware programs.
The general concept of applets allows to access hardware via software methods: The FPGA on a Silicon Software frame grabber can be programmed via software. This way, a Vision Processor optimized for a specific scenario can be programmed and built.
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