Real-time Image Acquisition System Based on FPGA for Hardness Tests by Indentation

We present a real-time video and image acquisition system, which has important characteristics such as modular, configurable, versatile and low cost. This system is developed on Altera DE2 and DE2-70 boards using Verilog HDL (Hardware Description Language) as a coding language. The proposed system architecture can be used for real-time image acquisition for hardness tests by indentation, using a specific microdurometer and a CCD camera. Thus, the geometrical evaluation of an indentation footprint through a human operator can be substituted by a real-time evaluation, which is controlled from a host computer. In addition, our system controls the image acquisition through JTAG interface for storing the images with JPG or BMP format. For this, it uses free software DE2 Control Panel and DE2 Video Utility as graphic interface. Thus, the image storage is realized by a combination of software and hardware. Several experiments showed that our system has high real-time performance and stability.