Jova Solutions is a San Francisco-based engineering test equipment development firm with special expertise in developing USB-based instrumentation. With the dramatic adoption of CMOS digital image sensors in a broad range of products, Jova determined an urgent need in the market for a reasonably-priced test system for CMOS image sensors. Time-to-market was a critical concern.
The Problem
There wasn’t enough time or money to build this module on our own. Without Opal Kelly, we would not have been able to economically and efficiently produce our CMOS image sensor test equipment.
Jova Solutions had a design concept and the engineering expertise to develop mid-priced test equipment for CMOS image sensors. These instruments would replace very expensive, high-end test equipment or “kludged-together” boards, boxes and cables used by camera designers and manufacturers for testing the increasingly ubiquitous CMOS image sensors.
Fast time-to-market was essential to capturing this market opportunity. So Jova searched for an off-the-shelf, high-performance FPGA USB module that included memory and I/O, to serve as an essential building block for their new product. This would allow them to devote all of their time and engineering expertise to quickly completing the development of their new product to meet the time-to-market window.
“We knew there wasn’t enough time or money to develop this part of the product in house,” said Martin Vasey, CEO of Jova Solutions. “We started out with a different third party product; it sounded similar, but it was not. It was more expensive, more cumbersome, didn’t work, and we couldn’t get any support. We decided to look for another solution.”
The Solution
The Opal Kelly XEM3010 is an expertly designed module that is the heart of our instrument… the central core of our CMOS Image Sensor Lab ISL-1600. It provides a development platform and a communication layer that has dramatically reduced development engineering expense and has accelerated our time-to-market.
Jova discovered that the Opal Kelly XEM3010 was an “out-of-the-box” solution which not only provided a great building block for the FPGA–with turnkey USB integration and high-speed interface–but also included a powerful software interface and API. “Opal Kelly provides a great building block, with high-level software tied into the power of the FPGA, that makes it quick and painless to connect our proprietary product to a PC,” Vasey said.
The Results
Opal Kelly products demonstrate good solid engineering, have been ‘field hardened,’ and have proven to be extremely reliable. The products are well documented and the software has an API for easy interfacing with our code. With Opal Kelly, we have less code to develop, maintain, and keep current. In addition, Opal Kelly provides excellent customer support. They have been available and responsive to our support and design needs.
