Multipix Imaging introduces two products, at opposite ends of the smart camera category.
The HIKrobot SC2000 Pro, an all-in-one lens-lighting-camera-processor-IO, is typical of a smart device for many of today’s basic vision tasks. It compromises of inspection tools such as pattern matching, measuring, counting, location and brightness/contrast measurement. These are fundamental machine vision tasks and cover many production line quality requirements. The user requires no programming experience; they simply configure and monitor the SC2000 Pro using the intuitive web-based interface. Supporting communication protocols, including TCP, UDP, Serial, IO, Modbus, PROFINET, Ethernet/IP, FTP which means it is an easy step to interface the camera to the production line system.
At the other extreme of smart camera technology is the new ADLINK NEON-2000 JT2-X. This is built on the NVIDIA Jetson TX2 GPU, meaning it has been designed with deep learning AI-based applications in mind. There is a choice of sensor resolutions and colour/mono options. The lighting and lensing are not included, Multipix Imaging provide these separately, but there is extensive I/O as part of the design to ease the direct interface to PLC’s and other control devices. Unlike the SC2000 Pro, additional inspection software needs to be installed/developed for this camera, such as MVTec’s HALCON. The open-platform design requires the developer to have software skills, capable of programming and creating a vision solution. Although this adds a layer of complexity in using the NEON-2000 JT2-X, it provides a very powerful AI edge-based solution for inspection tasks typical of deep learning, for example, sorting and classification.
Both the SC2000 Pro and NEON-2000 JT2-X are perfect for use in robotic applications, making them suitable for emerging markets and applications.
