Do you remember the musical "Fiddler on the Roof"? At one point in the second act, the village is all excited about a newly-married couple's "New Arrival," with everyone stopping by their home to offer congratulations. By the end of the scene, however, you realize that the "New Arrival" in the family isn't a child - but a sewing machine (which can be pretty important if you are trying to set up shop as a tailor, like Motel was).

It's always exciting to welcome a new member of the family - even if that new member isn't a person. And lately, we've been popping some champagne of our own.

Last year, Kodak announced the KODAK KAI-01050 Image Sensor - a 1-megapixel image sensor based on a completely new technology - the KODAK TRUESENSE 5.5 micron Interline Transfer CCD Platform. In September, we announced the KODAK KAI-02150 Image Sensor, extending the use of this platform to a 1080p format device. Now, just a few months later, we are announcing another "New Arrival" to this family - a new 2-megapixel sensor targeted to industrial and applied imaging applications.

Of course, the performance of this new device - the KODAK KAI-02050 Image Sensor -is excellent, providing high-resolution and high-frame rate in a standard 4:3 aspect ratio. But what's really interesting is how all three members of this family share common features that help camera manufacturers bring their products to market more quickly.

KODAK KAI-01050, KAI-02050, and KAI-02150 Image Sensors

Since all of these devices share the same technology platform, their performance is very similar - they all basically respond the same way to light, require the same circuits to operate, and interface into a camera design the same way. That means that before we even ship out the first sample of this new sensor to camera manufacturers, they already have a really good idea of how it is going to perform. And they also know that they will be able to leverage electronics from cameras using the first two sensors in this family to build a camera using the third. 

We even took this a step further by using the same mounting package for all three sensors, standardizing the assignment of the electrical pins, and putting those pins in the same physical locations for each of these devices. That means that a camera designer can build a single electronics board to support all three sensors in this family - the pins from the sensors all line up, the sensor package is the same size, and the circuits will be already in place. And since we reserved one of the pins on the sensor as an "ID" pin, the camera can actually "read" which sensor is plugged in so it can load the right firmware (to drive that particular sensor) when the camera is turned on.

In the end, this is really all about doing a job faster and better. Because we used a common design for this sensor family, it makes it a lot easier for manufacturers to build cameras that use the new devices. That makes cameras available more quickly - so that customers can start taking advantage of the higher resolution, frame rate, and performance these new sensors provide to increase the productivity and efficiency of their work.

Having something new is great. But having it as part of the family is even better.

Just ask Motel, the tailor.

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