Britain’s Jeremy Clarkson recently described the MacLaren MP4-12C supercar as sharing its name with a photocopier, and his audience got the joke immediately. Sexy products like supercars should have sexy names: which would you prefer: Aventador or MP4-12C?
I think this also applies to more mundane products like machine vision cameras. “MQ022MG-CM” is an engineering designation that may do a great job of describing the product, but it’s unlikely to lodge in anyone’s cerebellum.
Basler seems to get this, which is why they name their cameras, using words such as Ace, Pilot, and now “racer”. AVT get it too, basing their naming strategy on fish – Pike, Marlin, Guppy and so on. These are all product names that will stick in the mind: when I’m asked to suggest a camera I may not recall the MQ0-12C or whatever it is but I will remember “Stingray” or “Racer”.
The “racer” is an interesting new product. Described as “cost-effective” (which I imagine means “cheaper”,) this is the start on a new linescan family. It’s built around a CMOS sensor and is available with either Power-over-CameraLink or GigE interfaces. The latter of course saves a few hundred bucks on a framegrabber, though whether that’s negated by a price premium over the PoCL version I couldn’t say.
What I will say though is that I’m likely to remember the Racer next time I’m asked to suggest a camera while I doubt the DLC-2048-48-CL (yes, I made that up,) will spring as readily to mind.
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1 comment:
A little back-story on the Basler Pilot... It was initially launched as "Pioneer". But then a lawyer from the electronics giant owning the name objected. Never mind that one company sells consumer audio systems and the other machine vision cameras.
Since the part numbers already assigned started with "pi" they needed a new name that starts with "pi". I like the name "Pilot" better anyway.
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