Gatorade® for machine vision

Sorry, I mistyped. That should read “GatorEye for machine vision.” And what is GatorEye?
GatorEye is the new “GigE Vision® industrial camera family with an IP67 rating,” from Matrox. In other words, it’s a line of industrially-hardened cameras.

I will admit that when I first read the press release I was a little confused. The camera uses the same housing as the IRIS GT, although in a reptilian shade of green rather than adolescent purple, so it’s easy to mistake it for a smart camera. It’s not. It’s just a camera, albeit with a large number of sensor options, from VGA all the way up to 2Mp.

Pricing starts at $1,500 for the monochrome VGA model, which might seem steep until you remember that you don’t need to buy a separate enclosure. Put that way, the GatorEye is probably reasonable value.

My question to Matrox is: Why?

Matrox make great software and image acquisition hardware. I’m also a fan of their smart cameras. So what’s with the move into industrial cameras? I can only think that they see an opportunity to grab some market share from Cognex. I wish them well.