Smart cameras have been important to the industrial vision industry for many years. STEMMER IMAGING, the UK’s largest independent supplier of vision technology and services to industrial and scientific OEMs, system integrators and reseller markets features a number of smart cameras in its comprehensive product portfolio. All-in one units that combine image capture and processing in a single housing, often with an integrated illumination source, smart cameras process the image within the camera itself and output the results from the analysis over industry standard connections. Smart cameras can be used in all of the traditional industrial vision applications such as high volume component inspection, robot guidance, 1D and 2D (DataMatrix) code reading and verification, optical character recognition etc. Smart camera performance has increased significantly in recent years to accommodate increased image resolution and more complex and faster processing and analysis requirements. By incorporating the latest technology from smartphones, it is now possible for smart cameras to offer image processing capabilities that were previously only available on PC-based systems. This new generation of smart cameras offers greater flexibility to the machine builder or systems integrator who want to use vision as an integral part of a process or machine.
The BOA Pro smart camera from Teledyne DALSA is the latest addition to the BOA range and features a digital signal processor as well as an ARM cpu, which allows it to run the full Sherlock inspection software suite, previously only available on PC-based systems. Sherlock is an advanced machine vision software interface that can be applied to a wide variety of automated inspection applications for simple or very demanding tasks. It provides a rich suite of proven tools and capabilities that have been deployed in thousands of installations worldwide. This offers machine vision system professionals the comprehensive tools and capabilities needed for design, development, debugging, and user administration. Users can customise algorithms, construct scripts and develop operator interfaces that best suit their factory environment. A comprehensive range of measurement and analysis tools is complemented by advanced pattern recognition tools for object alignment and robot guidance, together with calibration correction facilities to convert pixels into real world co-ordinates. Other facilities include 1D and 2D code reading and verification and optical character recognition. This is underpinned by a versatile JavaScript based scripting tool, complete with drag-and-drop instruction editing, for the development of custom formulas or inline and background operations, as well as the ability to add custom algorithms into the development environment. The embedded software for the camera is setup via a local PC connection to the camera using Ethernet. Once configured for runtime, the Ethernet link can be used to communicate with other devices on the factory floor, such as PLCs, Robots and HMIs. With a choice of sensor resolutions from VGA to 1600 x 1200 pixels, a size of just 44 x 44 x 44 mm and an industrial IP 67-rated housing, this is a compact, robust camera that can be mounted in the most demanding industrial environments.
STEMMER IMAGING, The Old Barn, Grange Court, Grange Road, Tongham GU10 1DW UK. Tel: +44 1252 780000 Fax: +44 1252 780001
E-mail: sales@stemmer-imaging.co.uk www.stemmer-imaging.co.uk
