Happy Thanksgiving

No posting today because here in the US we're observing the Thanksgiving holiday. Check back on Monday 30th for more machine vision chat.

New kid in town

When I got word of new lighting company LDDlight.com I will admit that my first thought was, "Great, another LED lighting company. Just what the world needs.” But now that I’ve perused their web site I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

First, some background: as best I can tell, LDDlight is a joint venture between IMAC and Symco of Japan and three ex-NERLITE employees. They launched on-line in October 2009 and appear to offer a full range of machine vision LED lighting.

Their unique selling proposition seems to be that they provide an on-line store with transparent pricing. In other words, there’s no calling up your local distributor to haggle over price, something that always leaves me wondering if I’ve been screwed (in the nicest way possible, of course!) So if you’re pricing up a system and need to include the cost of lighting, LDDlight make that very easy for you. On the downside, I have to say that cheap they are not. Pricing is getting in to CCS territory, but having not tested the product, I can’t say if the quality is comparable.

Also on their web site are a number of useful technical notes on machine vision lighting. For example, there’s a “Light Selection Checklist” (not so much a checklist as a diagram really,) and this interesting note on “Color Considerations.” A feature of the latter that caught my attention was a table relating scatter to wavelength: apparently, “The shorter wavelength and higher scattering rate of a blue light results in more apparent surface defects than that of a red light. “ That’s something I hadn’t thought about before.

LDDlight. You heard it here first.

Camera interface standards

Do you need to understand the difference between GigE and FireWire?
Actually that’s a trick question, because of course anyone who works in machine vision needs to understand the difference. If you feel in need of a refresher, take a few minutes to read “GigE or FireWire” by Ingo Lewerendt of AVT and published in Quality Magazine October 28th, 2009.

It’s a good article that discusses bandwidth, network topologies and cable length issues. I didn’t realize that when it comes to multi-camera applications FireWire is the clear winner (unless you need really long cables or …)

AVT used to be firmly in the FireWire camp, that is, until they purchased Prosilica. Now they’re backing both horses. But if you’re at all familiar with CameraLink you’ll know camera interface technology isn’t a two horse race. In my view though, CameraLink is superior to both GigE and FireWire, and also more expensive to implement. A clear case of “horses for courses” as my gambling buddy says.

And if you feel like backing an outsider, there’s always USB.

Big menu or small?

When going out for dinner, which do you prefer – a restaurant where the menu lists two hundred different dishes or one with just five entrées?

Here’s the dilemma; choice is good, but when the menu is small doesn’t that suggest the chef is playing to his strengths?

It was my browse of the Matrix Vision web site that got me thinking this way. They’re classic “big menu” people, but I wonder if they’d do better to focus on a smaller range of products? There’s a phrase in “In Search of Excellence” about “sticking to the knitting,” which means don’t try to broaden out beyond your competencies. I think quite a few machine vision companies would do well to heed it.

Would you rather be known as a niche specialist, or as all-things-to-all-men?

And that concludes my “Thought for the Day.”

Upgrades all round

It must be something to do with the season: it seems like everyone is upgrading the machine vision software. First I got an email from Matrox telling me of some new capabilities in their MIL package, then Cognex follow up with version 6.0 of VisionPro.

To the MIL upgrades first: I might be oversimplifying, but the big things to my eyes are the addition of a bead tracking routine and support for 3D imaging. Of themselves they’re not huge advances. Bead tracking is one of those tools that from time to time I wish I had, while the addition of 3D imaging tells us that Matrox believe this is an application area with growth potential.

The VisionPro 6.0 release is a little more exciting. First, they’ve opened it up to images of greater bit depth. In other words, you can now feed it 16-bit images. This makes it possible to work with thermal images and, yes you guessed it, 3D. They’ve also added a line scan calibration tool, which I can see being very useful, (for line scan work, obviously!) And finally, VisionPro now supports 64-bit operating systems. That’s not something most users have been clamoring for, but it does show some forward thinking.

So which product is best? There’s no simple answer but keep checking back because at some point I hope to do a more formal comparison.

NeuroCheck machine vision application

Here in the US I don’t see that many vision systems built on NeuroCheck, so I found “Sizing up the sorting issue,” (The Engineer, November 3rd, 2009) an interesting read. The article describes a machine developed in the UK for the purpose of sorting the plastic size tags that adorn clothes hangers in stores. The photos show a beast of a system maybe 20 feet long and 5 feet wide that performs both color and character recognition. No info on speed, although I have to imagine that it runs at several parts a second.

Interestingly, “the system is claimed to be almost 100 per cent accurate.” In my world “almost” isn’t good enough, but I guess there are no safety or warranty concerns from miss-sorting clothes size tags.

DVT alternative

DVT fans loved the ability to use scripting to make what was really a pretty basic smart camera do some neat tricks. The InSight line from Cognex might be a better product, but that hasn’t stopped hardcore scripters from seeking an alternative.

A while ago I suggested that the PPT line was worth a look, since their IMPACT software provides a programming option; since then I’ve come across another alternative.

This is the EyeSpector®, developed in Germany by Eye Vision Technology and sold in the US through FSI Technologies.

To tell the truth, the EyeSpector® has been around for a couple of years now, but I have to admit that their color scheme and “Private Eye” marketing rather turned me off. However, I have now taken a look, and I think it’s an interesting DVT alternative.

The camera itself comes from Vision Components, who’ve been churning out smart cameras for quite a few years. The problem they had though was a lack of user friendly (no programming required) software, which is where Eye Vision Technologies came in. They’ve provided a front end which allows both drag-and-drop application development and programming in a form of VB.

Bottom line: it’s not pretty (to my eyes anyway,) but the EyeSpector® smart camera family might be worth investigating.