New Cognex smart cameras

My Cognex sales rep doesn’t love me any more. If he did, he’d surely have told me about the new 7000 series of In-Sight smart cameras, maybe even brought me one to play with it. As it is, I would never have learnt about this new range if I hadn’t been wasting my working hours on the web.

What’s neat about these cameras is the frame rates. While 30fps has long been the norm for VGA, and a 2Mp camera might get up to 15frames, the 7000 range trips along at over 100 frames per second from a 600 x 800 sensor. (I have to assume the sensor is a CMOS chip, although that doesn’t concern me: these days I find CMOS quality perfectly adequate.)

So why do I like high frame rates? Well some production lines just run that fast, some faster, but I also like how high frames can give you several chances to see. Particularly if a part is in motion, high frame rates make it possible to grab multiple images under lighting conditions that change subtly. This can be a great way of checking features that lack really good contrast. Another possible application is for linescan replacement. Snap away at a web fast enough and you can perform 100% surface inspection.

No word on pricing – perhaps that’s why my sales rep is keeping his distance: he knows I’ll want to beat him up a bit because the 7000 series In-Sights are probably expensive.