Does the world need another smart camera?

It was a case study in “Vision & Sensors” that introduced me to the Caminax from FiberVision. Frankly, the article itself is another of those “interesting-but-not-exactly-life-changing” application stories that crop up all over the trade press, but the camera is intriguing.

The Canimax is a smart camera, actually a small family of smart cameras, which you program without hooking up a laptop. Instead, you plug a monitor and keypad straight into the little black box and develop your application from there. In that sense it’s something of a hybrid between the Cognex InSight and the Keyence machine vision products.

One of the big claimed benefits is ease-of-use, but having not got my paws on one I can neither confirm nor deny that claim. Interestingly, the other claim is low energy consumption by virtue of it’s fanless design. This is in comparison with using a cooled cabinet for a PC. I’m not sure Canimax is the only company that could make such a claim – most smart cameras are fanless, aren’t they?

No word on pricing either, so you’re entitled to cry that I’m only bringing you half the story …