National Instruments announced the NI 1722 and NI 1742 Smart Camera

National Instruments announced the NI 1722 and NI 1742 Smart Cameras to provide engineers and scientists with high-performance systems at a low cost. The NI Smart Cameras are embedded devices that combine an industrial controller with an image sensor and integrate with NI vision software to offer image processing directly on the cameras, making them ideal for applications such as locating parts, inspecting packaging, verifying assembly and reading 1-D and 2-D codes.

The new cameras are shipped with National Instruments Vision Builder for Automated Inspection (AI), an interactive software environment for configuring, benchmarking and deploying machine vision applications without programming. With this intuitive, menu-driven software, engineers can build complex machine vision applications incorporating not only vision algorithms but also state-based execution with looping and branching using the built-in state diagram editor. For more advanced applications, NI Smart Cameras also integrate with National Instruments LabVIEW software and the full NI library of image processing and machine vision algorithms such as edge detection, pattern matching, 1-D and 2-D code reading and optical character recognition. Machine vision applications can migrate between platforms with few modifications because LabVIEW and Vision Builder AI support this entire range of hardware.