New-Tech Europe Magazine | Dec 2017

applications where images are taken simultaneously. Today it is also necessary for complex inspection systems to be easy to configure and modify – because efficiency and performance play a major role in production and hence in quality assurance, too. At the same time, it is important to define the options for intervention – i.e. the permissions – that individual employees are given. Previously, it was often difficult to set up multi- view inspections from scratch, make changes, or reconfigure the whole system. And as far as user interfaces (HMIs) were concerned, the current solutions do not offer any mobile intervention options and are limited in presenting different operator views based on user-access levels. Joerg Kuechen, Cognex Vice President and Business Unit Manager, Vision Products, sums it up neatly: “As our customers expand their use of machine vision into new areas, they are looking for ways to make standalone cameras work together to solve applications requiring multi-view inspections. The In-Sight VC200 now offers this functionality based on the In-Sight platform.” A solution like this has never existed before To perform Cognex multi-view inspections in a manufacturing environment, the user can connect up to four In-Sight smart cameras to the In-Sight VC200 vision controller via four gigabit Ethernet ports. Now, for the first time, it is possible to utilize the processing power of multiple smart cameras in parallel for high-performance applications. The In-Sight VC200 multi smart

Figure 1. Up to four Cognex smart cameras can be connected to the In-Sight VC200 multi- smart vision system controller. Overall system performance increases with each camera.

Figure 2. Platform-independent HMI technology allows for monitoring and controlling the application using a web-browser without needing to install special hardware or software.

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