Monday, December 13, 2010

A SICK viewer

When my teenage son and his buddies say that something is “sick’ they mean it’s very good. I think that expression can be used for this new display monitor from SICK, the Inspector Viewer.

The Viewer addresses that perennial problem of smart cameras – they run without a computer, but if you want to actually see what they’re doing you need to connect a computer. That’s where the Viewer comes in; it‘s a monitor that hooks to their line of “Inspector” smart cameras.

You might remember that industry leader Cognex came up with something similar a few years back, the VisionView.

The weakness of the VisionView, in my humble opinion, is price. It costs about as much as a basic PC from Dell. On the other hand, it does provide a touch-screen, so I guess if you needed that functionality it’s price-competitive. No word on the Inspector Viewer pricing, though it is a touch screen so it might be a worthwhile investment.

2 comments:

Narayan said...

VisionView comes in 3 different flavors. What is mentioned in the earlier post refers to the VisionView 700 which has a built-in touchscreen. VisionView also has lower priced models called the VisionView VGA and VisionView PC. VisionView VGA allows the users to connect their own VGA monitors (These could also be touch screen enabled VGA monitors). These are priced relatively lower and allows the user flexibility to connect their own sized monitor. The PC version of VisionView allows the user to license the VisionView software on the PC. Thus Cognex VisionView has multiple platforms for the user to pick from based on price and application needs. The software functionality is the same across the 3 platforms.For more details you can visit:
http://www.cognex.com/ProductsServices/VisionSystems/default.aspx?id=1506

Anonymous said...

The Matrox Iris GT has a direct VGA output for display. Any monitor can be used.