Can you tell me about the precision of the quartz oscillators used in Basler cameras?

If you happen to need to synchronize times, for example, the image timestamp from multiple cameras or the image timestamp with a PC time, you should consider the drift of the quartz oscillator used in Basler cameras (as well the drift of the PC quartz oscillator).

Every quartz oscillator has a time drift, and this drift is influenced by its surrounding temperature. The oscillator used in Basler cameras has a precision of about ± 30 ppm (parts per million) at a 25°C environmental temperature. The precision of the quartz in ace U GigE series cameras is about ±50ppm.

In the worst case, i.e., for the temperature range from 0 to 50°C, it has a precision of about ±100 ppm. That explains why we can assume the precision at 25°C to be the relative precision at a constant temperature.

So, for example, 14 hours are made up of 50400 seconds or 5.04 x 10^7 milliseconds.

For ±30 ppm, you would have a drift of about ±1512 ms (or about 1.5 s) per 14 hours.

For ±50ppm, you would have a drift of about ±2520 ms (about 2.5s) per 14 hours.

For ±100 ppm you would have ±5040 ms (about 5 s) per 14 hours.

Note that these values are related to the absolute frequency drift, so the drift at a relatively constant temperature should be significantly smaller.