National Instruments Extends Smart Camera Family

By DE Editors

National Instruments (Austin, TX) extended its NI Smart Camera product line with three new products, the NI 1744, NI 1762, and NI 1764, which are said to deliver faster processing speed and higher image resolution, thereby offering more powerful options for engineers requiring an embedded machine vision solution.

Powered by a 533MHz PowerPC, the NI 1744 Smart Camera has a high-resolution image sensor that acquires images up to 1.3Mp (1280x1024), suitable for inspecting objects for smaller defects and make measurements with four times the resolution of previous NI Smart Cameras.

For engineers needing higher performance for pattern matching, optical character recognition, and code reading, the NI 1762 Smart Camera offers a 720MHz Texas Instruments DSP coprocessor alongside the 533MHz PowerPC, making it possible to run algorithms up to four times faster with no changes to the application software. The NI 1762 contains the same 640x480 resolution image sensor found in the previously released NI Smart Cameras.

The new NI 1764 Smart Camera offers the highest resolution and performance of all the new cameras, featuring the 1.3Mp image sensor and the 720MHz Texas Instruments DSP coprocessor. The NI 1764 is suited for high-speed manufacturing line applications that are inspecting large objects or locating and identifying small codes or features.

The new cameras are shipped with NI Vision Builder for Automated Inspection (AI), an interactive software environment for configuring and deploying complete machine vision applications without programming.

For more information, readers can visit National Instruments.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company's website.