Neat little sensor

Here’s a product that seems to have crept in under the radar, (under my personal radar anyway.) It’s the Sharpshooter™ from Balluff, who seem to be gunning for a slice of the Cognex Checker market. This is that set of applications where a simple proximity sensor doesn’t provide enough information but you really don’t want the expense of a smart camera system.

I haven’t had an opportunity to get ‘hands-on’ with the Sharpshooter, but it looks like an industrial package aimed at the maintenance tech or PLC programmer, rather than the PhD image processing guru. And in my book that means the probability of successful implementation is high.

At around $1,300, pricing is competitive too, although there are a number of similar products in this market; the Wenglor BS30/40 is another that springs to mind. I like the way Balluff and others are trying to take the complexity out of machine vision, but I still believe that users need more education and training in how and where to use these things.