Vecow UE-1004 Renesas uPD720202 4-Port USB 3.0 PCIe Card with Four Independent Controllers

USB3 cameras are a simple way to add machine vision to an inspection station, but several on one controller compete for the same bandwidth. The UE-1004 is the four-port model in the UE-1000 series from Vecow, and Vecow names traffic surveillance, logistics, factory automation, machine vision, inspection, medical and security among its uses. We supply it configured and tested, with the card fitted in the host and the drivers installed.

Four Renesas μPD720202 host controllers sit behind a PCI Express x4 interface, compliant with USB 3.0 Revision 1.0 and Intel xHCI Revision 1.0. With four controllers for four ports, each USB3 camera gets its own controller rather than a share of one, which helps keep frame rates steady when every camera streams at once.

The four Type-A ports run at 5 Gbps SuperSpeed, with 480 Mbps, 12 Mbps and 1.5 Mbps for older devices. A jumper per port sets a 900 mA or 1500 mA current limit, and remote power on/off for each port is optional, controlled through Vecow’s hardware monitor utility, console tool or API. A 4-pin 12 V ATX connector supplies additional power when the PCIe bus is not enough. The UE-1008 doubles the count to eight ports on the same four controllers, and for GigE cameras the PE-2004 adds four PoE+ ports.

Vecow rates the UE-1004 from 0 °C to 70 °C in operation and from -40 °C to 85 °C in storage, which suits a host in a ventilated cabinet on the line or in a warehouse. The card has a full-height bracket, and Vecow lists FCC and CE with RoHS compliance. Vecow does not list operating systems on the datasheet, so we confirm driver support for the host image when we build the system.