Here’s a puzzle. Why does the NI website show two different products as a NI 1772 Smart Camera?
Seriously. Here’s the old, strangely-styled 1722 priced at $1,999, and here’s the chunky new 1722, priced at $3,598.
That’s quite a bump in price, so what’s going on? Well the new cams, billed as “High-Performance” and running from VGA to 5Mp, use a 1.6GHz Atom processor, while the old – and presumably outgoing – model harnesses a 400 MHz PowerPC processor. That’s quite a bump in horsepower, but does it really warrant a $1,500 price increase?
Or, have NI just noticed that competing products, from the likes of say, Matrox, are priced from around $3,500 for an Atom-powered, VGA res smart camera, so they figured they should position their camera at the same level?
Or, could there be more to this than meets the eye? If you’re interested in my hypothesis, check back in a day or two.
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3 comments:
The NI 1772 is listed at 3499$ USD, and offers a variety of features that are a step above the 1722, including 4x speed increases with the Intel ATOM processor, IP67 design with M12 connectors, video out, and even compatibility with telecentric lenses!
To clarify the post above, the two products also have different model numbers, 1722 and 1772.
Looks like I boobed in thinking the two numbers were identical. Obviously, National Instruments would not be that dumb.
Still, perhaps an argument for a more interesting naming convention?
One phrase makes me curious: "...and even compatibility with telecentric lenses!"
Why would there be incompatibility?
Spencer
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