Fluorescent lights shine
A line of industrial-grade, high-frequency, sealed fluorescent linear light fixtures target inspection and machine-vision applications. These fixtures can withstand the harsh environments of the steel, food-processing, pulp, paper, and pharmaceutical industries. Manufactured to NEMA-12 specifications, the lights come in twin 4-W, twin 6-W, twin 8-W, and twin 13-W configurations. They are available in a variety of colors and color temperatures. StockerYale Inc., Salem, NH 03079; (603) 893-8778.
Motion controllers come in boxes
DMC-1415-BOX single-axis and DMC-1425-BOX dual-axis motion controllers are configured in a 5.1 x 3.0 x 6.8-in. metal enclosure with a power supply, an RS-232 port, and an Ethernet 10Base-T port. The controllers connect directly to 90-260 Vac. They precisely control one or two servo motors using PID compensation with velocity and acceleration feed-forward, digital notch, and integration limits. Operation modes include point-to-point positioning and jogging while accepting encoder frequencies up to 12 MHz. The DMC-1425-BOX controller also provides linear and circular interpolation, electronic gearing, and electronic CAM. Other features are nonvolatile program memory, forward and reverse limits, home inputs for each axis, three uncommitted digital inputs and outputs, and two uncommitted analog inputs. Controller connections are made with a 37-pin D-type cable and the company's ICM-1460 module. Galil Motion Control Inc., Rocklin, CA 95765; (916) 626-0101.
Frame grabbers add controller
Bandit-II CV and Bandit-II RGB frame grabbers provide a VGA accelerator that supports color resolutions to 1600 x 1200 pixels at 100 Hz, 16 Mbytes of on-board memory, and 2- and 3-D display rendering. They come in AGP and half-slot PCI-bus formats; offer full-frame video capture; and include on-board trigger, strobe, input/output signals, and a choice of software development tools. CV version offers up to six multiplexed composite video or two S-Video inputs in RS-170, NTSC, CCIP, and PAL formats. Additionally, RGB version supports one RGB input, nine multiplexed monochrome composite video cameras, or three gen-locked monochrome cameras. On-board DMA transfers digitized images to VGA display and system memories in real time. Software support includes the company's Sapera and Imaging Studio software development libraries under Windows NT/2000/9x. Coreco Imaging Inc., Bedford, MA 01730; (781) 275-2700.
Lenses support C-mount
Compact 2/3-in. C-mount video lenses suit 1/3-, 1/2-, and 2/3-in. image formats. They are optically corrected for imaging of both the visible and near-infrared ranges (400-1000 nm) and also the spectral sensitivity range of CCD sensors. Optical correction in the near-infrared region proves useful for image processing under artificial light conditions. These lenses enable the removal of the infrared cut-off filter, which increases the total irradiance onto the sensor and the video signal level. Five lens models are available: Cinegon 1.4/8 and 1.4/12 mm and Xenoplan 1.4/17, 1.4/23, and 1.9/35 mm. Schneider Optics Inc., Hauppauge, NY 11788; (631) 761-5000.
Imaging toolbox upgraded The MathLab Image Processing Toolbox 3 incorporates several new features. Gray-scale morphology performs mathematical-morphology operations on binary and gray-scale images such as dilation, erosion, and watershed and Euclidean distance transforms. Spatial transformations include affine, projective, polynomial, piecewise linear, local weighted mean, and user-defined functions. Image registration provides an interactive control-point selection tool, subpixel control-point refinement, and fast normalized cross-correlation. Deblurring tools include Lucy-Richardson, regularized, and Weiner. Dicom file format support reads image data and metadata for storing digital files. The MathWorks Inc., Natick, MA 01760; (508) 643-1415.
Camera sees infrared Phoenix infrared cameras are available in three infrared spectral bands-near-, mid-, and long-wavelength using InSb, InGaAs, or QWIP focal-plane arrays. Medium-resolution cameras offer 320 x 256-pixel resolution; high-resolution cameras offer 640 x 512-pixel resolution. Cameras include a head unit and a back-end electronics package that can be separated by up to 30 m. Back-end electronics comes with a real-time imaging module for standard video interfaces and an acquisition subsystem for machine-vision and image-processing applications. All cameras produce 14-bit digital data at 40 Mpixels/s. Indigo Systems, Santa Barbara, CA 93111; (805) 964-9797.
Variety of lenses A line of specialty microlenses has been expanded to include a range of new sizes. Cone lenses come in 3.0- and 10.0-mm diameter, coated and uncoated, and a polished cone top and base. Uncoated rod lenses are available in 3.0-mm diameter by 10.0 mm long, 5.0-mm diameter by 15.0 mm long, 5.0-mm diameter by 20.0 mm long, and 10.0-mm diameter by 20.0 mm long. These lenses are polished on the circumference and ground at both ends. Offered in AlSiO-coated, 45°, and 10.0- and 12.0-mm-diameter versions, these rod lenses are used to bend image paths, redirect laser light, or generate a laser line. Edmund Industrial Optics, Barrington, NJ 08007; (800) 363-1992.
Pattern generator tests CPCI CompactPCI PI-2005 pattern generator provides a 225-MHz clock and near-infinite looping capabilities. It generates a range of digital patterns to check focal-plane arrays, digital timing, and DAC, FPGA, and ASIC devices. The generator is expandable to 64 output channels in 16-channel increments and features 64 kbytes of memory per channel and start/stop trigger inputs. PI-PAT software eases programming, data entry, and editing functions. Rugged housing suits portable, bench, and rack-mount uses. Pulse Instruments, Torrance, CA; (310) 515-5330.
Camera shrinks size The 1.2-in-square by 1.0-in.-deep Blinc smart digital camera delivers 640 x 480-pixel resolution, a 30-frame/s video capture, digital and analog outputs, and a 110-dB dynamic range. Powered by a single 3.6-V supply, it can operate from "power down" to "image capture" in less than 0.1 s using proprietary CMOS active-pixel-sensor technology. Automatic contrast detail enhancement is performed with an on-board 16-bit digital signal processor to acquire video even when scene lighting varies over a range of 17 photographic stops. Sarnoff Corp., Princeton, NJ 08543; (609) 734-2507.
Camera accents small size The GP-US542 three-CCD color micro camera head measures 20 mm in diameter. It features three 1/4-in. CCDs at 768 x 494-pixel resolution. An on-board 10-bit digital-signal processor helps deliver images with 700 horizontal lines in a minimum illumination of 15 lux. The camera head can be interchanged with GP-US522 and GP-US532 three-CCD camera heads without the need to change the camera control unit. Panasonic Industrial/medical Group, Secaucus, NJ 07094; (888) 880-8474.
Imaging board acquires high resolution IMAQ PCI-1409 image-acquisition plug-in board can capture images with up to 1024 gray scales. It can accept four video inputs from standard and nonstandard cameras and acquire color images of stationary objects from NTSC, PAL, and RGB cameras while operating in StillColor mode. The board can capture images in 8- or 10-bit mode at 60 frames/s using a double-speed progressive-scan camera. It comes with free NI-IMAQ driver software that uses one set of function calls for a variety of cameras, including analog line-scan types. National Instruments, Austin, TX 78759; (512) 794-0100.