No more machine vision “evals”?

I think it was Jon Chouinard, then working for NER, who coined the phrase “poke and hope” in describing how the typical machine vision feasibility consists of much trial and error and very little science.

While I agree with Jon that we should use science and engineering to arrive at solutions to our machine vision challenges, sometimes it’s still necessary to try stuff out and see what works.

This is where it’s so useful to be able to borrow hardware for evaluation. I don’t care how well equipped your bench or lab is, there will be times when you haven’t got the tool that seems most likely to solve your problem. So you do what I’ve always done, which is to call up the manufacturer or their distributor and ask nicely if you can borrow said tool.

This worked well back in the ‘olden days’ (2009) but it isn’t working so well now. I’m starting to find that some companies – no, I’m not naming names – are refusing to provide evaluation units. Instead they say, “If you want to try our camera you’ll have to buy it.”

I understand that they have a business to run, but since higher-end cameras will run several thousand dollars, and I’m still under pressure to manage my costs, that’s a non-starter for me. There are other, more helpful, sources of hardware, but I’m not happy with the way my choice is being limited.

Fortunately this unhelpfulness is restricted to just a few companies at the moment, but since the beginning of the year I have noticed other companies getting a lot more formal about how they manage their evaluation/loaner program. I can’t blame them for that: we are talking about some high dollar kit, and when it’s been used once it only has secondhand value. But telling me to buy rather than borrow doesn’t help me and it sure as heck isn’t going to help them sell more cameras.