Is National Instruments really a Vision company?

So the good folks down in Austin, Texas, have unleashed another smart camera, in two flavors. First impressions are that it’s a worthy contender. The housing is a sturdy diecasting, which we like, the processor is the dependable PowerPC, and if you plump for the higher spec, (and higher priced) variant, you get the ability to listen to an encoder.

Now if it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck … But let me ask you this – when you’re out shopping for a sensor that sees, do you think of Omron, Banner and Keyence, or do you think National Instruments? My ever dependable gut tells me that the NI smart camera is not going to be the breakthrough they’d like it to be. NI is an instrumentation company, for heavens sake, not a vision company.