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Vision Systems Portal: Products, News, Articles, Events & Resources
Vision Products, News, Articles, Events & Resources
Welcome to Automation.com's portal for Vision with valuable information and resources for controls and automation engineers on vision systems. Vision and imaging systems coupled with software have advanced dramatically to serve a number of new applications including part recognition, reading bar codes, guiding robots and quality analysis.
Subscribe to our e-Newsletter or get the latest information on Vision sent to your desktop as soon as they are published on this page.
Articles
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Video Pipeline Monitoring Offers A Tool To Avoid Costly Losses
- 03/10/10 Pipeline & Gas Journal, February 2010 By Steve Rubin, Longwatch Video delivers ready-to-use information, in the form of still and moving pictures, to help controllers make better decisions faster. Thus, video helps address the operational gaps in efficient and cost-effective ways. |
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Vision system sorts strawberry plants
- 02/28/10 Vision Systems Design, February 2010 Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s National Robotics Engineering Center have developed a plant-sorting machine that uses machine vision and image processing. The machine inspects and grades harvested strawberry plants, and then mechanically sorts by quality—tasks that until now could only be done manually. |
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Images in Motion
- 02/28/10 Vision Systems Design, February 2010 By Andrew Wilson New emerging standards based on existing point-to-point interfaces, serial bus interfaces, and networking protocols necessitate re-evaluating camera-to-computer interface standards. |
White Papers
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Video Transmission Using Cellular Gateways
By Greg Santos, Longwatch By using cellular technology, video can be transmitted from remote sites to HMI/SCADA systems at a relatively low cost. Includes guidelines on cellular services, how to set up a cellular system, and lists of resources. |
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Using the NI 17xx Smart Camera Direct Drive Lighting Controller
By National Instruments The use of proper lighting is often overlooked when designing a machine vision application. More robust and accurate inspections can be achieved when appropriate lighting techniques are utilized. This application note discusses considerations when selecting lighting equipment and demonstrates how to utilize the Direct Drive lighting controller feature on the NI 17xx Smart Camera with LabVIEW or Vision Builder for Automated Inspection. |
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Automated Inspection & Gaging Systems Improve Quality and Reduce Costs
By Cincinnati Automation As machine vision inspection cameras and laser gaging sensors have become more cost effective, many companies are implementing automated inspection & gaging systems in their facilities. These systems can be as simple as standalone cameras or sensors integrated into existing machinery or as specialized as custom designed and built turnkey automated inspection machines. |
Application Stories
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Stemmer finds out what’s in the box
- 03/13/10 Control Engineering Europe, March 2010 A quality control process to determine whether sandwiches in clear packages correspond to their labels uses Stemmer Imaging’s Common Vision Blox machine vision toolkit. The system recognises Cheese Ploughman’s, Cheese & Celery and Cheese & Bacon Club sandwiches. |
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OPC simplifies integration of process vision, quality control systems
- 03/13/10 Control Engineering Europe, March 2010 Logicpark used the OPC DataHub from Cogent Real-Time Systems to network an ABB quality control system to a Viconsys process vision system at the Kimberly-Clark production facility in Niederbipp, Switzerland. |
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Sorting Color-Coded Cubes
- 02/28/10 Vision Systems Design, February 2010 By Andrew Wilson Machine vision and custom color image-processing combined with pneumatic actuators sort clothing identification tags at 300 parts per minute. |
Resources & Literature
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Poll Question - How many different networks do you have in your facility?
How many different communication networks do you have implemented in factories and/or plants? The list of available networks includes, but is not limited to: Foundation Fieldbus, ControlNet, PROFIBUS, Interbus, AS-Interface, CanOpen, CC-Link, PROFINET, HART, Ethernet, EtherCAT, Ethernet Powerlink, SERCOS, Modbus, LonWorks and DeviceNet. |
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IMPACT 8.3 Vision Software Download
IMPACT 8.3 vision software pairs with smart camera technology to provide enhanced usability and inspection capabilities for challenging machine vision applications - in a multitude of new ways. The API (application programming interface) works with the Microsoft ActiveX platform, allowing IMPACT data to be seamlessly embedded in local machine and/or factory control systems. |
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Free NI Measurement and Automation Catalog
The National Instruments catalog is the leading virtual instrumentation resource for engineers and scientists seeking the most productive customer-defined software and hardware tools. |
Training & Seminars
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Matrox Imaging offers vision software training courses
- 09/03/09
Fall 2009 machine vision and image processing training will be held at Matrox Imaging’s Montreal headquarters and in Stuttgart, Germany. |
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Cognex hosts free machine vision seminars
- 11/02/08
Half-day event shows how easy it is to set up and deploy vision systems for automated inspection tasks in the automotive, pharmaceutical, food, beverage, and other industries. |
Product Announcements
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LDDLIGHT introduces IHR Series ring lights
- 03/09/10
IHR Series are for applications requiring high light intensity, illumination of large areas or long working distances. |
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Control Microsystems adds video surveillance to ClearSCADA
- 02/28/10
When motion is detected, an alarm is raised and a video “snippet” is attached to the alarm message and sent to the central control site, showing what happened before and after the event. |
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IDS Imaging annnounces 10 Megapixel USB camera
- 02/28/10
For OEMs and system integrators, this USB camera is only 7 mm high and provides a digital input, a digital output, two programmable GPIOs, and an I2C interface on a 36 x 36 mm chip. |
Company & Organization News
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Allied Vision opens office in Singapore
- 03/15/10 Boon-Keng Teng was hired as Allied Vision Technologies’ Asia-Pacific Sales Manager based in the Singapore office. |
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HALCON machine vision software runs on mobile phone
- 03/14/10 HALCON Embedded runs on the Nokia N900 mobile phone with the Maemo Linux-based operating system. |
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ARC says prices are coming down on automation products
- 03/07/10 One element contributing to the price erosion is that controllers are rapidly becoming an automation commodity in some sectors. |
Project News
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Adept Technology to supply robots to solar cell manufacturer in Taiwan
- 08/31/09 Adept’s Quattro robot and AdeptSight vision system will be the building blocks for the wafer unloading automation cell. |
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SICK to supply cameras to USPS packaging processing project
- 05/12/09 SICK will provide Ruler E 3D cameras as part of continuing improvements to the United States Postal Service’s Automated Package Processing System (APPS). |
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Honeywell to help protect Woodside's LNG plant
- 11/03/08 Honeywell will protect Woodside’s Pluto onshore liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant with a sophisticated industrial security system. |
Events
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