What Is Offered in an Industrial PC Machine Vision Computer?

Machine 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.

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.

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.

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

September 27, 2017February 7, 2018

Allied Vision’s high-resolution Prosilica GT now with 12, 16 and 25MP ON Semi PYTHON sensors

Allied Vision extends its Prosilica GT Large Format camera platform with three high-resolution ON Semi PYTHON image sensors (Python 12K, Python 16K & Python 25K)

Combined with robust thermal housing designed to operate in extended temperature ranges and fluctuating lighting conditions, the new Prosilica GT Large Format cameras are ideal for high-definition imaging applications with demanding requirements of robustness and design-in flexibility. They provide a great option for high-quality imaging for anyone looking to switch over from existing CCD cameras to CMOS cameras with similar resolutions and optical formats.

Features include:

Extended temperature range (-20 deg. C to + 50 deg. C)
NIR sensitivity up to 1100nm
Modular concept providing various lens mounts (M58, M42, and EF-mount)
Fixed Pattern noise correction, Defect Pixel Correction, and Trigger over Ethernet.

Prosilica GT5120, Prosilica GT4096, and Prosilica GT4090 at a glance

See full specification for the series below:

Prosilica GT5120, 5120 x 5120, 25MP

Prosilica GT4096, 4096 x 4096, 16MP
This is a great replacement for the KAI-16000 CCD sensors!

Prosilica GT4090, 4096 x 3092, 12MP

Now that you have a great high resolution camera, what lens works best?

High resolution cameras with the ON Semi Python sensors are great, but only as good as the lenses you use! It is imperative to have the sensor sizes matched with the lens formats. Additionally, we need to make sure the lens resolution is adequate for the image sensor pixel size.

To aid in the lens selection, we have the following recommendation on lens series. Recommendations as follows

Prosilica GT5120, 5120 x 5120, 25MP: This camera has a 32.58mm diagonal image sensor, so a F-mount lens is required. Two options are Kowa and Schneider
KOWA – F mount series
Schneider – F mount series

Prosilica GT4096, 4096 x 4096, 16MP: This camera has a 26.06mm diagonal image sensor, also requiring a F-mount lens.
KOWA – F mount series
Schneider – F mount series

Prosilica GT4090, 4096 x 3092, 12MP : This camera has a 23.09mm diagonal image sensor which falls into a 4/3″ format.
KOWA 4/3″ lens series

As a note, as the pixel size is 4.5um, this is not as demanding on the lens resolution and will only require 111 line pairs/mm (lp/mm) making these adequate selections.

Need more help in understanding lens terminology and format sizes? Here are some related links

1stVision has experienced engineers to help you develop and further understand the best camera and lens combination for your application.

September 19, 2017April 26, 2019

Sony has a great new 1.1” Image Sensor, but what kind of lens can I use with this format? Computar MPY Series!

Computar MPY Series Lenses — Computar MPY lens series

If you have been around industrial camera lenses for a while, you know that there are many ½” and 2/3” lenses, not as many 1” lenses, but what do you do when you have a 1.1” sensor?! The solution? Use the Computar MPY 12 Megapixel lenses!

If you have been following Sony’s new IMX image sensor product line, their newest sensors are based on a 3.65um pixel pitch. However, when you scale this up to their new 12MP sensor (Sony Pregius IMX253, IMX304), the sensor size becomes 1.1” (17.6mm diagonal) format. A 1” lens format will not cover this image circle and in turn has vignetting in your image (Read our blog post on sensor size vs. lens size ) .

One possible solution is to use a 1” lens and vignette 5% on each side, or use a 1” lens and stop it down where the vignetting goes away. However this is not an optimal solution. A second solution is to use a F Mount lens, but if the camera is a C mount, you will need a C to F adapter, again less than ideal.

Fortunately there are some C mount lenses that are greater than a 1” image format. Kowa and Schneider both have been shipping 4/3” format lenses, although these are quite expensive. Recently, Computar has come out with a line of 1.1” format lenses SPECIFICALLY for this sensor!

Key Features of the 1.1″ format, Computar MPY 12MP C-mount lenses

Click here for full series specifications

Individual Specifications can be found via this link for the models below:

8mm – V0828-MPY
12mm – V1228-MPY
16mm – V1628-MPY
25mm – V2528-MPY
35mm – V3528-MPY
50mm – V5028-MPY

1st Vision’s sales engineers specialize in industrial imaging and can help you in the lens selection. Additionally, they can help ensure you have the best lens mated to the newer sensors to ensure the highest contrast.

August 30, 2017August 11, 2022

Learn about 1stVision’s new OEM 1” machine vision lenses which provide excellent price vs performance ratios

For many years 1stVision has offered several lines of OEM machine vision lenses. These lenses are ‘unbranded’ but they are made with the glass of one of the big three Japanese optical manufacturers.

1^st Vision lenses have excellent optical performance for a great price currently offering a product line designed for a 2/3” image formats with 2MP and 3MP resolutions.

Click here to see the full line of OEM lenses here and request a quote

Advantages
The OEM machine vision lenses offer some distinct advantages:

They are less expensive than similarly performing ‘branded’ lenses
When designed into instruments for resale, all issues come back to the original manufacturer. The end user cannot bypass the manufacturer, ensuring you, when your users have problems, you know about them!
With a good price point, the 1″ format can be used for all smaller sensor sizes using the “sweet spot” of the lens!

What’s new? OEM 1” Optical format machine vision lens.

Recently, 1stVision have begun offering a new OEM line of 1” format, high performing 2 and 3 MP lenses, which offers all the above advantages, but you can now use it with the new Sony Pregius and On Semi Python sensors that require lens optical formats greater than 2/3” (For example the Sony Pregius 2MP ( IMX 174, IMX249 ), 8.9MP ( IMX267, IMX255 ) and ON-SEMI 5MP Python 5000 sensors ) Search on the image sensors here

Click here now to view the new product line and request a quote

1^st Vision maybe a distributor, but we are really your value-added vision consultants! With combined experience of over 100 years, we can help discuss the optical performance, how it relates to your image sensor and help you in the design process. Please contact us to start a conversation