Tuesday, June 23, 2020

Stratio Unveils Ge-Based SWIR Camera

After 7 years in development, Stratio unveils BeyonSense, said to be "the world’s first germanium-based smartphone-compatible camera." The 11 x 8 pixel BeyonSense Pre camera is expected to be available for sale in a month from now, if COVID situation allows. The company says:

"Due to COVID-19, our fabrication facilities in Silicon Valley have been closed for the past few months and there is no clear timeline for when they will reopen.

As this is an incredibly dynamic situation, we can only expect to ship BeyonSense® Pre with 11x8 pixels in a month following the reopening of our facilities. You can be assured our team is working around the clock to make it possible to deliver BeyonSense® to you.
"

"The Stratio idea was conceived by three PhD students in a small corner desk at Stanford University.

As PhD students in Electrical Engineering, they knew about the myriad of advantages with infrared imaging – from material analysis to night vision. However, the technology was prohibitively expensive so that only a few could benefit from it. One day, they discussed how a new sensor material called germanium (Ge) could be responsive to infrared light waves in real life. They began digging deeper, consulted experts, and conducted countless experiments to find out how they would achieve low cost, small size, and low power consumption. It turned out to be a years-long journey, but a fruitful one. Hence Stratio was born, in January 2013.
"


Stratio shows a short demo video of its new camera:

5 comments:

  1. 11x8 pixels must be a typo, right?

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  2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=66&v=9pkDIW-3Zik&feature=emb_logo

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  3. I doubt that most of their "target applications" - military, farming, business services - will be interested in such a low resolution. Those customers all can afford real cameras. This is a toy/novelty at best.

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  4. how many times I wanted to see a bulb through a siicon wafer? (and i have them in the lab)
    if I'm very escheptic about ubolometers in mobile phones, because there is no real need in a normal day to use them, this 11x8 swir is almost useles. their marketing people was not able to find an example of application to show, and for sure they have spent some hours thinking about it.

    As uncooled MWIR sensor manufacturer, is hard to find applications for detectors in swir and mwir outside the industrial/medical/militar market, and they can afford cameras

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  5. BeyonSense now sells a 128 by 128 pixel camera. They claim to have overcome the germaniums dark current with "charge modulation". Any idea about this? Maybe similar to the PMD (photonic mixing device) with getting a differential and therefore dark current free signal?

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