Smart camera simplifies machine vision

A Sony Europe - Image Sensing Solutions product story

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Sep 8, 2005

The XCI-SX1 has been introduced to meet the increasing demands in smart cameras which are currently seeing the highest growth rates within the machine vision market.

Sony Europe's Image Sensing Solutions Division has released its first smart camera, integrating an image sensor and frame grabber with a powerful onboard processor running the industry-standard open-source Linux operating system.

The XCI-SX1 has been introduced to meet the increasing demands in smart cameras which are currently seeing the highest growth rates within the machine vision market.

Unlike conventional machine vision cameras, images captured by the XCI-SX1 are processed within the camera and the processed data are directly transmitted to a PC over a network.

The Sony smart camera provides a flexible hardware platform for OEMs, systems integrators and end users who require systems to follow the ever-changing industry trends by quickly and cost-effectively developing and implementing a range of machine vision applications, without changing specific hardware infrastucture.

"We're excited to be launching our first smart camera", said Arnaud Destruels, Product Marketing Manager at Sony ISS.

"We're keen to help our customers implement intelligent vision applications in the most cost-effective, flexible way possible, and the XCI-SX1 certainly does that".

"By building in intelligence, Sony allows preprocessing, or the implementation of complete applications, on the camera: and all under the control of a standard PC or stand alone".

The new camera, which is based on the company's successful range of XC camera modules, provides monochrome image capture at SXGA resolution and a speed of 15 frames/second, or VGA resolution at up to 34 frames/second - currently the industry's fastest.

In addition to 128Mbyte of DDR-SDRAM the camera provides 128Mbyte of CompactFlash storage capacity, sufficient for a wide range of machine vision applications such as object recognition, inspection, measurement and alignment.

The combination of a 400MHz x86-compatible AMD Geode 533 processor, built-in memory and Linux kernal allow the XCI-SX1 to be easily configured for many end-user applications.

Freely available off-the-shelf image processing software can be installed, or for more complex solutions system integrators can customise software as required.

It provides a direct PC monitor output and USB connector, external trigger for simplified configuration, and electronic shutter with a full range of control.

An integrated 10Base-T/100Base-TX interface allows image data to be conveyed to a remote PC without the need for any special interconnection facilities or extra hardware.

The sensor itself is a half-inch type 1280 x 1024 progressive scan (PS) CCD, offering the state-of-the-art resolution for applications which need to focus in on small features such as fine surface inspection of critical alignment applications.

The XCI-SX1 implements partial scan, which allows users to specify the areas of interest within an image, cutting image processing.

A binning function can either be used to increase effective frame rates or effectively increase sensitivity.

The all-in-one camera features a compact dust-proof, robust housing just 55 x 55 x 110mm, weighing just 400g, and is specified to industrial standards for shock and vibration.

A standard C-mount is used for the lens fixing, and the device can operate over an industrial temperature range of -5 to +45C.

The new all-in-one XCI-SX1 smart camera from Sony is available immediately.