You would ever buy a screw whose thread is not standardized? Or a word processing program that forces you to use a special mouse? Then, in the context of machine vision, you surely ask yourself:
- Why should I be forced to buy special cameras, cables, frame grabbers or even 1394 interfaces?
- Why do I still have to pay high prices of these special components?
- Why must I depend on the manufacturers of these special components?
Several years ago we decided to look for solutions to combat this unacceptable situation. As a result we learned three thinks:
- We have to make use of interfaces that are widely used BEYOND the market niche of machine vision (to utilize cheap, highly integrated chips).
- These interfaces have to be supported by BIG firms, such as Sony.
- We have to focus on interfaces that are part of modern operating systems.
The last requirement is especially important since it is the prerequisite for a consistent separation of application software and hardware. If this were not the case, you would only be able to use your text processing software with a special mouse. How do we put this knowledge into practice? Since there is no doubt that Windows is the most common operating system, we need to take a look at which interfaces it has for our purposes. On close study we see that Windows offers a complete infrastructure for image processing purposes. Its name is DirectX. Download white paper.
As always, should you wish to speak to us about this or any other topic related to machine vision, please call us or email us.