Is Your Machine Vision System Color Blind?

Color machine vision has its challenges. Systems can produce three times the data (or less than one-third the resolution) of a monochrome camera solution. Color can introduce more potential sources for imaging errors, more complexity, more cost, and require careful engineering that reduces the system’s flexibility to deal with lines that make products of varying shape, colors, and size. In fact, if designers can find a way to use filters and lighting to measure a colored area using monochrome cameras, they usually do. However, for many applications ranging from electronic manufacturing to printing and food processing, color is the only way to solve the problem. Let’s look at some of the considerations a system design needs to take into account to create a successful color machine vision solution, including careful matching of camera, optics, and light source.

refer to:http://www.visiononline.org/vision-resources-details.cfm/vision-resources/Is-Your-Machine-Vision-System-Color-Blind/content_id/4333

BUSINESS OPTIMIZATION AND OPERATIONS

The ability to operate and manage operations in a location-agnostic manner opens the door to a wealth of opportunities. For instance, experts and operations staff can be relocated to population centers, and out of harms’ way. They can then be leveraged over multiple assets in real-time to ensure maximum utilization. Networking collaboration also allows for much faster creation and utilization of best practices across a network of operating assets, thereby contributing to better knowledge retention and management as well as greater efficiency, and establishing a true, shared corporate culture throughout the enterprise.
Real-World Stories

Offshore operations

The Situation: A leading global producer of crude oil and natural gaslooked for a way to stay ahead of dynamic market demands and overcome challenges associated with offshore oil and gas Automation. As part of an innovative technology project and with the help of Honeywell, this company built a Solutions to help coordinate control of multiple offshore platforms in the North Sea, and improve operations and efficiency.

With the new CCR, this company has centralized operations at 18 of its 26 offshore platforms. All operating and production procedures are fully automated and synchronized, creating increased flexibility and competitive advantage. At the heart of CCR is Honeywell’s Experion Process Knowledge Management System (PKS), which enables operators to monitor and control production at various platforms.

refer to:
http://www.automation.com/business-transformation-through-remote-collaboration-optimization-and-operations

DIY pushes open hardware from kindergarten to Kickstarter

Resurgence of the Do It Yourself (DIY) community has driven a range of open networking platforms, giving aspiring technologists cheap and easy access to embedded development. Outside of hobbyist toys and educational devices, however, “hacker” boards are increasing performance and I/O flexibility, and have become viable options for professional product development.

The “maker” movements of the past few years quickly gained traction in the education and hobbyist markets, as organizations began producing open hardware boards with a “less-is-more” architecture at a price to match. DIY boards like the Arduino, BeagleBoard, and Raspberry Pi provide “known state” programming platforms that allow easy exploring for novice developers, and enough flexibility for advanced hackers to create some pretty remarkable things – which they have solutions.

Now, Kickstarter projects like Ninja Blocks are shipping Internet of Things (IoT) devices based on the BeagleBone (see this article’s lead-in photo), and startup GEEKROO is developing a Mini-ITX carrier board that will turn the Raspberry Pi into the equivalent of a PC. Outside of the low barrier to market entry presented by these low-cost development platforms, maker boards are being implemented in commercial products because their wide I/O expansion capabilities make them applicable for virtually any application, from robotics and industrial control to automotive and home automationsystems. As organizations keep enhancing these board architectures, and more hardware vendors enter the DIY market, the viability of maker platforms for professional product development will continue to increase.

refer to:

http://embedded-computing.com/articles/diy-pushes-open-hardware-kindergarten-kickstarter/

The big challenge with open source que

With the increasing availability and associated complexity of a wide variety of 32-bit microcontrollers and microprocessors, the possibilities for embedded product designs are exploding. Leveraging a myriad of embedded computer and integrating advanced graphical user interfaces and multimedia formats requires the availability of supporting software stacks from the underlying operating system. And, more than ever before, embedded software teams are turning to open source software and embedded Linux as the platform on which to base these systems in the “Internet of Things.” But while open source has proved itself incredibly technology enabling, it can also make the workflow excessively unwieldy. The good news is that solutions and best practices exist to help development teams improve their software development workflow when open source is an increasingly large part of the mix.

refer to: http://embedded-computing.com/articles/the-not-code-quality/

Vehicle PC AR-V5403FL

AR-V5403FL

ITS/Telematics Excellent 100 – Fanless and Dustproof Intel 945GME Core 2 Duo Vehicle Computer

 

AR-V5403FL adopt Core 2 Duo CPU in vehicle computers as the hardware platform to install in their 40 thousands service trucks. This project integrated the RF ID reader, OBD2 terminal, sensors and hand held terminals to improve the operation efficiency of the huge fleet. 

 

Fanless and Embedded System

AR-ES5430FL

Fanless and Dustproof Intel 945GME Embedded System

 

1. Intel 945GME + ICH7M
2. Support Core 2 Duo/Core Duo/Celeron M
3. VGA/DVI/LVDS/TV-Out
4. Dual Giga LAN
5. PCI-104 Expansion
6. Anti-Shock 2.5″ HDD Mounting Kit
7. Audio, USB2.0, IDE, CFII, COM, GPIO, SATA

Fanless Industrial PC Half Size Card

Fanless ISA Bus SBC with DM&P Vortex86DX 800MHz, VGA, LAN,FDD, IDE, CF, 2 x COM, 4 x USB2.0

 

ISA half-size CPU board with DM&P Vortex86DX 800MHz SoC and 256MB DDRII memory. The key component on AR-B8172 like CPU and memory is onboard design to avoid the shock and vibration issue that is happened in the machine used in factory.