The Chronos 1.4 High speed camera is getting a sensor firmware upgrade or “Wavetable” that allows for up to 38,565 fps at 336×96 pixels in windowed mode. This effectively allows the camera to go below the previous 640 pixel locked horizontal resolution which allows for even faster capture speeds.
You will not have HD resolution in these modes as you are dropping horizontal and vertical resolution to read the windowed part of the sensor. Most high speed cameras do this to allow for extremely fast frame rates while preserving the ability of the limited data rate in hardware to cope with them. The upgrade will ship with all Early Bird and the rest of the Chronos 1.4 cameras going forward.
Shipment of early bird units should commence by the end of March slightly altered due to the Chinese New Year affecting production of components.
Notes on the Sensor:
It seems that the Chronos 1.4 is using the Luxima 1310 Sensor capable of over 1000fps at 1280*1024 and over 1500fps at 720p HD. Luxima sensors are being used for high speed applications all over the globe with good results due to great low light ability and price/performance that are much more conducive to build low cost cameras than previous technology.
As you can see on our chart below the crop in resolution is quite severe to get that frame rate increase but it can mean getting the scientific results or industrial machinery frame rates you need when you care little about the picture resolution and more about capturing physical phenomena.
More Sensor info and specs can be found here: http://www.luxima.com/product_briefs/LUX1310.html
You can read the full update by David Kronstein creator of the Chronos 1.4 Below:
Chronos 1.4: Speed boost to 38k fps, production update #2
Chronos 1.4 is getting a speed boost to 38,565 fps at 336×96! Thanks to our Image sensor supplier Luxima, who has been awesome to work with, we have a new wavetable (sort of like firmware) that allows you to trade horizontal resolution for speed down to 336 pixels, down from the previous 640 pixels. This will be included with all cameras.
In production news, since the last update there isn’t too much to report, as Chinese New Year pretty much shut down all of China for 1-2 weeks. We’re currently waiting on a second test batch of cases from the machinist to correct some minor issues (edges not deburred, incorrect threading, etc). The main limiting factor is the electronics which are also slowed by Chinese New Year. The main boards are just about complete, with a few through hole components left to install, and should ship in the next week or so barring any rework required after X-ray inspection.
In the meantime we’ve been working on production jigs, software updates, and sourcing a few pesky components like large quantities of 16GB DDR3 SODIMMs. We currently expect to ship earlybird units around the end of March.
In the meantime, check out some cool shots taken on Chronos:
An amazing achievement no doubt to achieve what they have to date, however the inability to bring 1080p to this model is a massive blow!
Lets hope they can get the funding to push
further development in the future and make it to the big league!
1080p was not in the cards for this initial model. Now if everything goes well they can start thinking about 1080p and 4k for a different camera. It is already extremely good for what it is and costs.