What Is Offered in an Industrial PC Machine Vision Computer?

Neousys embedded computer

Neousys Industrial computerMachine Vision applications required some essentials components and functions.   These components will always have a machine vision camera, and typically need lighting with some  input and output (I/O) functions to synchronize events in addition to lenses and other accessories.

Industrial PC machine vision computers are also needed to  run PC based machine vision software and provide communications between the camera and software.  These computers need to be suited for various environments which may be dusty, as in a casting foundry, to full clean rooms in electronics manufacturing. Ideally the computers should help in the overall integration of machine vision applications.

“Machine Vision Computers” are designed specifically for these applications and provide a robust solution!  

Introducing Neousys  who is a leader in machine vision computing, designed their computer from the ground up for machine vision.   This blog post addresses the specific features that are offered and what problems it solves.

What’s really offered in a “Machine Vision” computer?    Key features are outlined as follows

Fan-less computer designs:  In cases where dust is prevalent, normal computers have fans which brings in dust, clogging fans and creating the system to heat up. Neousys has a fan-less design with efficient heat dissipation allowing for high temperatures from -25 to 70 Deg. C.

Neousys heat efficient design
Efficient Heat dissipation design, providing a higher temperature range than the competition.

Unlike other industrial computer suppliers, Neousys platforms begin with a single board computer laying out all heat generating components evenly, optimizing the thermal design.  In turn, at 100% CPU loading, AND at the ends of the specified temperature ranges, there is no performance degradation.

Neousys hot components
Designed for thermal management, all of the hot components are interfaced directly with the heat sink with carefully selected thermal interface material.

Modular Mezzio cassette design:  Application requirements differ from needing multiple communication ports to synchronization of events via inputs and outputs.  Neousys provides easy to configure, exchangeable modules to unlock the limits and provide feature expansion.  MezIO modules can be added for Power over Ethernet (up to 8+ ports ), USB ports, COM ports (RS232/422/485), Digital IO including encoder inputs or even customized features.   All this done with a focus on thermal management.Neousys Mezzanine design

Integrated Controls:  To ensure high quality images, a machine vision system requires accurate interaction between lighting, camera, actuator and sensor devices.   Neousys integrates LED lighting controller, camera trigger, encoder input, PWM output and digital I/O, to connect and control all the vision devices. All the vision-specific I/O are managed by Neousys’ patented MCU-based architecture and DTIO/NuMCU firmware to guarantee microsecond-scale real-time I/O control.Neousys embedded computer

Multiple processors architecture:  High performance is needed to ensure factory up-time.  Neousys provides multiple processors in one computer, such  as the CPU, MCU, and GPU (e.g. Nuvis-5306RT, Nuvo-5000E with GPU cassette).  Fully customization with specific processors, GPU’s, Memory,  Drives (SSD / HDD) are available.

Small form factors:  Space is always a constraint to keep products and factory footprints to a minimum.   Starting at 4″ x 6″ x 2″, Neousys has machine vision computer offerings to streamline any design.

Contact us to talk to an expert!

1stVision has industry experts on hand who can discuss your application in detail and help specify the best computer and machine vision components for your application.  We have a full portfolio of machine vision cameras, lenses, lighting and accessories.   Please contact us to help you!

Be sure to check out our latest post highlighting Mikrotron High Speed Machine Vision cameras

Challenges you will encounter with high speed machine vision applications and how to solve them!

Mikrotron high speed cameras

Mikrotron high speed vision solutions

High speed machine vision camera applications can solve many problems ranging from diagnosing high speed packaging production lines, sports analytics to droplet characterization in spraying applications to name a few.

These solutions require high frame rate cameras, but as in many machine vision applications, there are challenges that must be overcome to be successful.

4 challenges for high speed machine vision camera applications and solutions are presented below.

High Frame Rates are required to capture the event!
The key to high speed image capture is to stop motion by having enough image “frames” within short time periods to play them back slowly and analyze the event.  In order to capture these frames, first, you must have a fast image sensor, but then have the ability to offload the image data from the camera to the host computer.  Cameras using the CoaxPress (CXP) interface with appropriate sensors provide this solution.   Below is an example of achievable frame rates using a Mikrotron EOSens 3CXP camera.
mikrotron eosens 3cxp frame rates
Adequate light and a good image sensor is required! 
To achieve high frame rates, very short exposure times are required.  These short exposures do not allow much time for light to hit the image sensor.  In turn to overcome this, you need a strong light source and pixels that are very sensitive.  High speed Machine vision image sensors such as the Alexima AM41 and ON Semi LUPA3000 found in the Mikrotron EoSens 3CXP and EoSEns 4CXP cameras respectively solve this problem.

Image storage and an adequate computer is required for machine vision camera event capture.
The camera serves its function to capture frames, but typically with “event capture” applications, we need to save the data for playback at a slower frame rate.  In many cases, this requires adequate computer processing power, memory and solid state drives (SSD’s).  Depending on the application, computing systems with added features such as IO, encoder inputs, serial communication and Power over Ethernet (PoE) ports may be required.

High speed image recording software is needed.
Capturing the high speed video stream is not trivial, yet alone the playback.  Software packages such as Streampix by Norpix is a great solution for single up to multiple camera setups.
Contact 1stVision1stVision can customize a solution using off the shelf industrial components from Mikrotron (High speed cameras), Neousys (Industrial computers), Norpix (Software) and couple with the right lenses and accessories from frame grabbers to cables for your application.

Mikrotron has high speed machine vision camera solutions for many industries.  The following video’s demonstrate various solutions.

Automotive Industry – Metal Punch on Oil Filter

Pharmaceutical Industry – Automated filling of syringes

Packaging Industry  (Food and Beverage) – Trouble shooting packaging machinery

Packaging Industry (Blister Packs ) – Trouble shooting injection molding of blister packs

Contact us to talk to an expert!

1st Vision’s engineers have a combined experience of over 100 years of experience (yes, we are old, but can help you find the best solutions!).  We love talking about vision applications and can help provide a detailed solution.  Give us a call at 978-474-0044 or email us @ info@1stvision.com

Related Blog Posts & links

Video Tutorial – How to use industrial cameras for high speed imaging from machine vision to event capture