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Machine Vision Software Development Kit

25th July 2006

Sapera Essential is a machine vision software toolkit that combines board level acquisition and control with image processing tools to provide developers with the critical functionality to design, develop, and deploy high-performance applications.
Sapera Essential offers quick and easy access to software functions to control image acquisition, manage image memory and facilitate image processing and analysis tasks. Sapera Essential includes powerful board configuration and camera set-up utilities plus a suite of image processing tools including all of the basic imaging tools and a new pattern finding package employing correlation and geometric pattern finding algorithms, along with versatile Barcode and Blob Analysis functions.

Key Features:
· Cost effective Machine Vision software libraries for image acquisition, processing and analysis
· Advanced functionality includes high-level tools such as an area/edge based Search tool, a 1D/ 2D Barcode tool and a Blob Analysis Tool
· Trigger-to Image Reliability – a proprietary engineering frame work to ensure reliability of the image acquisition process
Sapera Essential includes a series of image processing libraries that have been highly optimized for basic image processing functions, including: filtering, geometry, measurement, morphology, point-to-point, segmentation, transform operations and sub-pixel edge detection.

Pattern finding algorithms utilize both correlation (area) and geometric (edge) based technologies to achieve accuracy up to 1/50th of a pixel. Designed to work under poor lighting conditions, with difficult to detect patterns or with rotated images, the Sapera Essential pattern finding tool is fast, robust and accurate and is ideal for demanding alignment applications.

Sapera Essential has the functionality to locate and decode 1 and 2-dimensional barcodes for a variety of standard codes. Designed to operate on degraded and poorly illuminated images, the Barcode tool includes rapid, robust algorithms and functions, and is fully rotational/scale invariant.

Sapera Essentials separates foreground objects from the background and calculates more than 50 spatial and gray scale blob features, including: area, location, perimeter, elongation, roundness, convexity, bounding box and orientation.
Sapera Essential comes bundled with DALSA Coreco’s advanced CamExpert, a proprietary camera configuration utility specifically designed to leverage the power of DALSA Coreco’s image acquisition boards. This Windows®-based utility provides an interactive environment within which to create a new, or modify an existing config file for area and linescan cameras.

Windows-based automated inspection software

7th July 2006

Sherlock 7 from Adept Electronic Solutions is advanced machine vision software designed for systems integrators and end users. It can be easily configured to solve a wide variety of automated inspection problems.

Sherlock 7 is designed with "point & click" functions and provides a suite of tools and features that have been deployed in thousands of installations worldwide.

iPD's Sherlock 7 is designed with iPD's "ease-of-use" philosophy and can be used to develop applications quickly giving integrators the advantage of reduced development costs and reduced time to market.

Sherlock 7's tools and functions include advanced pattern finding for object alignment and robot guidance; measurement tools; calibration tools for lens distortion; analysis tools such as blob analysis and edge counting; colour tools for monitoring, classifying, sorting and tracking; barcode and optical character reading tools; scripting tools; I/O tools and maths tools.

Sherlock 7 operates on Windows-based desktop or industrial PCs and with IPD's Vision Appliances which are compact, fully integrated multi-camera vision systems.

When used with Sherlock, Vision Appliances can provide full colour or mono imaging, in-built opto-isolated I/O, real-time reject queuing and timing and all other features required of a high performance vision system.

iPD's Sherlock 7 features include:

• Image pre-processors and machine vision algorithms
• Support of user customised plug-ins
• Ability to enable a full programming environment with variable assignment, control loops, subroutines and fully featured debugging
• Extensive communication options such as Ethernet PLC, Modbus etc
• Simple programming
• Ability to customise operator interface with VB and .Net

iPD's Sherlock is represented and fully supported in Australia and New Zealand by Adept Electronic Solutions and is used in a wide variety of applications to provide quality assurance and control in manufacturing.

Armed with proven machine vision tools in a "point & click" interface, no programming is required and the development, testing and commissioning of a vision system is rapidly facilitated.

iPD's Sherlock 7 automated quality inspection program allows the user to identify and correct problems before customers find them.

Sherlock 7 claims to be able to help the user improve customer satisfaction, increase productivity and reduce production costs. In addition, it offers the flexibility to adapt with changing inspection needs and can protect technology investments.

Adept wins best stand at national manufacturing week

7th July 2006

The Adept exhibition at Darling Harbour

Adept Electronic Solutions recently exhibited at National Manufacturing Week held in the Sydney Convention Centre from May 30 through to 2 June on Darling Harbour.

NMW 2006 featured nine industry-specific pavilions with Adept Electronic Solutions featuring in the Robotics and Automation pavilion with a wide range of automation and robotics companies.

The exhibition attracted international exhibitors from countries such as Germany, New Zealand and China.

Manning the Adept Electronic Solutions stand was Brodie McCulloch, Adept's marketing manager; Chris Moore, a new member to the Adept staff who manages the NSW territory; and Marc Fimeri, the Managing Director.

Adept Electronic Solutions had running demonstrations as well as a range of vision components on display. A demonstration that attracted much attention was the iPD VA40 vision appliance. This was set up to show automated bottle inspection, and many visitors were interested as they could see how easy this vision appliance was to use. Some of the different applications visitors enquired about included barcode inspection, optical character recognition, general manufacturing metrology and toleranceing, bottle cap inspection and many others that the VA devices from iPD are designed for.

Also on display was the new TM-6740GE Gigabit Ethernet industrial camera from Pulnix. Running live it demonstrated the new GigE interface that allows for connection directly into a gigabit ethernet network removing the need for a frame grabber or any other dedicated acquisition hardware.

A third live demonstration used the Dalsa Spyder camera to demonstrate the use of linescan on applications where the part to be inspected is moving past the sensor. The live demonstration was created with a round can on a turntable with the Spyder camera imaging the label on the can to make sure all parts of the label were correct. This system allows customers to build an image from a single line of pixels, decreasing the cost of applications while increasing speed.

Also on show were Firewire cameras from AVT and USB2 cameras from iDS including their RE versions that provide IP67 protection.

Overall the exhibition was very successful. Visitors demonstrated satisfaction with the level of sophistication of the displays at the exhibition and with the wide variety of product types.

High Speed Camera

7th July 2006

The Optronis CamRecord 800

The Optronis CamRecord 800 from Adept Electronic Solutions is a compact stand-alone high speed recording camera that is mobile and flexible.

Its light weight and small size make it ideal for carrying and locating at different points of a production line or any other situation that requires the capture of high speed events.

It records internally and then allows the transfer of the high speed recordings to a desktop or laptop via a Firewire connection.

The main feature of the CamRecord 800 is its fast image recording at up to1000 images per second.

Another feature is its fanless design which is unique for a camera that operates at such high speeds. It allows the camera to work in dusty and harsh environments such as wood and paper manufacturing plants. The fanless design also allows for use in clean rooms as well as most other environments.

Features include:

• Resolution of 800x600 pixels
• 1000 fps at full resolution, with reduced resolutions up to 150,000 fps
• Free adjustable exposure times down to 1 µs completely independent from the framerate
• FireWire Interface (IEEE 1394a)
• Large camera memory of 4 GB for long recording times
• Fan-less housing for very dusty working places or for clean rooms
• CMOS sensor with high sensitivity
• C-Mount lens mount
• External trigger and synchronisation
• Incl. software and all cables

Ultra-compact USB industrial cameras

3rd July 2006

Reliability in harsh environments.

THE uEye RE camera range is a family of ultra-compact USB 2.0 cameras for industrial applications equipped with an IP67 rated housing that ensures reliability in harsh environments.

Available from Adept Electronic Solutions, the new models all share the same ultra-compact housing which has been developed for use in industrial environments where water or dust and particulates are a problem.

Called the Rough Environment, or RE for short, all camera models in the uEye range are available in the new RE housing.

uEye RE is a family of price-effective and ultra-compact USB 2.0 cameras for medical and industrial applications. By using USB 2.0 technology uEye is the easiest way to go digital with no need for any additional frame grabber hardware.

The uEye RE camera offers one digital trigger input and one digital output to control, for example, a flashlight. Both the universal digital input and the digital output can switch voltages up to 24V. The signals are optically isolated and available on the D-SUB connector of the camera.

By using Direct Draw, the uEye RE SDK offers the ability to blend flicker-free text and graphic overlay information into the live video image.

Graphics, date, time and many more can be realised with the DD Back Buffer and DD Overlay Surface modes. Direct Draw allows flexible displaying of the video images.

Highlights at a glance:

• USB 2.0 interface for a flexible use at PC, Notebook and embedded systems.
• Extremely rugged.
• High quality CMOS and CCD sensors.
• Camera control and power supply via the USB bus.
• Universal trigger input and digital output, optically isolated.
• Ultra compact housing with C-Mount.
• Powerful SDK (based on the FALCON SDK) for Windows 2000/XP and LINUX.
• DirectDraw support, ActiveX , Twain and Direct Show (WDM) driver.
• Interfaces for ActivVision Tools, Common Vision Blox, HALCON and NeuroCheck available.

Affordable machine vision camera

3rd July 2006

Dalsa-Coreco digital camera.

DALSA-Coreco's Genie Gigabit Ethernet cameras are affordable, easy to use digital cameras specifically engineered for industrial imaging applications.

Represented in Australia by Adept Electronic Solutions the Genie-M640 takes full advantage of Gigabit Ethernet technology, transmitting data over standard CAT-5e and CAT-6 cables to distances of up to 100m.

Like all GigE cameras, the M640 is based on pending AIA (Automated Imaging Association) GigE Vision Standard to directly link the camera to a PC.

The Genie-M640 uses a CCD, monochrome sensor with a resolution of 640 x 480. Operating at a maximum of 60 frames per second, all Genie cameras are supported by DALSA-Coreco's Sapera(tm) LT software libraries.

Sapera LT has been field proven in ten's of thousands industrial applications. As soon as the Genie is connected to the system, auto discovery automatically identifies the camera and communicates all of the supported features to the Sapera environment greatly facilitating system set-up and configuration.

The Dalsa-Coreco Genie series of cameras combines standard Gigabit Ethernet technology with DALSA-Coreco's Trigger-to-Image Reliability framework to dependably capture and transfer images from the camera to the host PC.

Trigger-to-Image Reliability (T2IR) is a proprietary engineering design framework that ensures the reliability of the image acquisition system by supplying the key design elements needed to:

1. Secure the image acquisition process;
2. Permit error identification;
3. Provide a recovery mechanism if and when errors do occur.

Genie-M640 key features

• Compact, digital camera for industrial & medical imaging.
• Uses standard PC and server Ethernet ports & hardware.
• Facilitates cable lengths up to 100m (CAT-5e or CAT-6).
• Simplified set-up with field proven Sapera LT software featuring CamExpert 5.0.
• Engineered with DALSA Coreco's Trigger-to-Image Reliability framework

Analogue cameras perform digitisation externally (i.e. frame grabber), while in a digital cameras the digitisation takes place in the camera.

The benefits of in-camera digitisation include better signal to noise ratios as well as superior image accuracy.

Line scan vision appliance

7rd July 2006

Imaging and inspection from two different cameras.

THE VA50 provides end users and system integrators with a high performance, compact machine vision solution for line scan applications.

This product, available from Adept Electronic Solutions, is designed for tasks such as cylindrical unwrapping, large format imaging of moving surfaces or continuous web inspection.

The VA50 provides multiple camera inputs that allow imaging and inspection from two different cameras simultaneously. It is supported by various cameras of different resolutions that typically range from 1024 to 8096 pixels. The VA50 provides the timing inputs and outputs for synchronising the cameras to the speed of the moving part or surface.

The 24V compatible I/O is broken out to removable screw terminal connectors or opto-isolation modules. The VA50 is equipped with standard serial and Ethernet interfaces for communicating with complementary devices or connecting into the factory network.

User input is typically through keyboard; mouse and monitor attached to the unit, but is also supported through the Ethernet connection to a common operator interface. All physical connections are located on the VA50 rear panel, with status lights available on the front.

Application setup software is pre-installed and ready to run, thus eliminating installation and revision control problems. For maximum flexibility, the VA50 is supported by Sherlock inspection software.

Sherlock's configurable interface allows users to quickly prototype, benchmark and deploy inspection solutions. In addition to its extensive library of preprocessors and machine vision algorithms, Sherlock supports inline scripting, user custom tools and a customisable operator interface.

Key features:

• Multiple camera inspections.
• No software to install.
• Powerful embedded processor ensures fast inspection times.
• Rugged system for online or offline inspection.
• Choice of camera type and resolution.
• Integrates well into factory environments.
• Universal solution for end-users, integrators and machine builders

The VA50 is available in two versions, differentiated by performance. The VA51 has 3X processing performance of the VA50.