Panoram Offers a Full View Of Surveillance Landscape

A new category of imaging device, ideal for use with Panoram's wide aspect ratio displays, provides a real-time 360° or 180° native field-of-view.

Sun Valley, CA-Panoram Technologies has been shipping the FullView™ video camera, capable of image capture at 440 x 4000 pixels for 360° and up to 15 ~ 22 frames per second, for expanded field-of-view monitoring and surveillance applications, reports Theo Mayer, President/CEO of the California-based company that is world-renown for its advanced display systems.

The unit features solid state construction in a durable, weatherproof, aluminum housing and is compatible with multiple Panoram displays, including the new PV230 and PV290 desktop displays. "This compatibility with our new affordable desktop models makes the FullView™ video camera an attractive addition to our product line." Mayer said.

"This flexible formatting provides powerful interactive control to users, allowing them to monitor a full 360° view as well as a higher resolution detail of any 180° section," Mayer continued, "Additionally, the digital zoom feature allows operators to examine specific areas of interest."

All of these capabilities and controls are completely electronic. The FullView™ video camera is constantly capturing the entire 360° world around it. Since all selections and controls are solid state, there are no motors or actuators-making the camera suitable for reliable operation in sensitive high-security environments.

The Camera Control Unit for the CCD cameras can be housed in a standard rack unit to be located within 30'(10m) of the camera head. Each camera head comes with both CCU as well as distribution amplifiers to send the signal to either the matrix switcher or the image-processing computer.

The 16 X 4 matrix switcher allows up to two 360° plus two 180° cameras to be toggle switched. The output of the matrix switcher can then be routed to the image processing and system control computer which feeds the Panoram PV290 series.

The camera housing is weatherproof and constructed of aluminum with a Pyrex view port. A top cap shields and protects the view port from settling sand, dust, or debris. Special heating and air cooling mechanisms are available for the housing for extreme environments. Custom housings for particular applications are available on a per project basis.

In this application scenario, various combinations of FullView™ 360° and 180° cameras are deployed and routed to the system matrix switcher where inputs are selected to be processed into the multi-channel outputs for the display.

The cameras can be selected, electronically panned or zoomed while various screen formats are chosen. Additional non-processed inputs to the display can include a high resolution, wide screen visualization computer, as well as up to three composite or S-video sources such as satellite television, a VCR, camcorder or even closed circuit TV video feeds.

Other FullView™ imaging system applications include high-risk exposure situations (toxic, explosive, and unfriendly), remote, sealed vehicle piloting, tele-presence and entertainment.

"The full system provides the user with an unprecedented information rich environment," Mayer concluded, "hence our descriptive name, FullView™."