Lodur is a frame grabber. It is responsible for connecting a camera to an FPGA platform (Honir).
This tool is a piece of software design that has to be loaded on a board containing an FPGA (Xilinx VU9P for example) and a QSFP+ network interface.
Lodur is an IP core responsible of grabbing images in gigEvision standard usually supported by industrial cameras. It is also responsible to send the received stream into another stream understandable by the machine learning inference engine Honir (done in task 4.4 too).
Lodur performs data health checks while receiving the images such as ensuring that the image is complete, or that the format is respected. It can also perform a pre-processing step on the mage if required, such as pixel format conversion from YUV to RGB.
The advantages of this tool are:
Above: An industrial camera takes picture and send it over the gigEvision link. The gigEvision stream rely on UDP packet transfer. It means that the image is cut in a number of packets (sub part of the image) that are sent in sequence to Lodur.
Lodur receive the package, perform health checks on the image, perform pre-processing if activated and cut the image in pixels and then send it to the next module: Honir (inference engine).
Lodur is able to receive images from a camera at maximum camera streaming speed: 1gpbs. We tested it with a computer simulating the camera with a higher throughput and it is able to support up to 1.8 gbps. This means it is possible to support more powerful cameras that stream at more than 1 gpbs.
At a system level:
IN: gigEvision video stream
OUT: pixel stream