LabView Inside Smart Video

Though not quite a product yet, National Instrument’s NI-1742 Smart Camera was on display at NI Week. Intelligent cameras like this aren't new, but those that run LabView applications are. The Smart Camera houses a 533 MHz PowerPC processor with 127Mbytes of RAM and 128 Mbytes of flash. It can run LabView applications and Vision Builder, and communicates with the outside world using dual Gigabit Ethernet interfaces. The camera has a connector on the front for driving lighting controls typically required for process control and image recognition. It can deliver up to 1A in strobe mode. An LED ring can be mounted around the camera lense. There are opto-isoluated IO ports and an RS-232 interface, as well as encoder support for rotating coordination. The system has a monochrome VGA resolution CCD that supplies images up to 60 frames/s, but color will be an option in the future. There is partial scan and binning support. In the past, combining LabView with a camera also required a PC or CompactRIO platform. Now an application can fit into the camera itself. Related Links National Instruments