Macnica ATD Europe Distributes New Corning AF Explorer Kit

Macnica ATD Europe announces that it has started distribution of the new Corning AF Explorer kit, a comprehensive platform realizing fast and reliable Auto Focus based on Corning’s Varioptic Liquid Lens technology.

Corning is an innovator in materials science, applying itself to glass science, ceramics science, optical physics, along with deep manufacturing and engineering to develop products that they say “transform industries and enhance people’s lives”. Macnica ATD represents and distributes innovative electronic component brands and offers engineering services for machine vision and imaging applications.

The Corning AF Explorer kit consists of several PCB boards with associated software and is provided in a ready to use format. The company says the kit is best suited for camera developers who want to evaluate and study characteristics of the liquid lens, including imaging performance, autofocus performance, or any other standard camera function. In addition to the evaluation platform, the kit can also be proposed as a reference design.

AF Explorer has been developed around the Cypress CX3 chip and a specific ISP (available from Corning upon request). It is based on an MIPI pipeline between sensor, ISP and embedded host. Several types of sensor boards and liquid lens modules are supported whilst the default configuration includes a Sony IMX335 5Mpx sensor and the Corning Varioptic C-S-25H0-075 liquid lens S-mount module.

The Corning Varioptic Auto Focus Explorer kit is fully compliant with the USB interface standard and its USB Video Class (UVC) compliant plug-and-Play setup allows for Windows 7, 8.1, 10 and Ubuntu 12.04 and 14.04. The development kit further includes an integrated Time of Flight (TOF) sensor for distance measurement and different lighting options including white, blue, and NIR LED’s. The AFLab Software enables basic sensor settings, AF mode selection, AF Algorithm, and more. The kit configurations can be used with C-C-series lenses and C-S-series lenses from Corning Varioptic Lenses.

As part of the Corning Varioptic webinar series, a webinar workshop highlighting the Corning AF Explorer will be held on 22 and 23 June 2021. Depending on the time zone the dates for the identical webinars are:

• 22nd at 2 PM CET
• 22nd at 7 PM CET
• 23rd at 8 AM CET

More information and registration for the Corning Varioptic webinar series can be found here.

You can find more information about Corning and the new Corning AF Explorer kit on its website. You can also find more about Macnica ATD on its website.

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