Machine Vision and The Vision Show

On October 12 this year at the end of a trip to the Northeast I had the pleasure of attending The Vision Show, a trade show that occurs annually in Boston, MA. You can check out my recap of the show here:

I last attended this show in about 1999 when I was heavily involved in machine vision. At that time I was doing a lot of automotive and gauging work using DVT. I had also done a couple of jobs with Cognex, and at that time I related machine vision to smart cameras and the occasional difficult application to Cognex’ computer-based platform.

The biggest thing I learned from attending that show was that you could build your own platform using discrete frame grabbers and graphics processors from companies like Matrox. I was also surprised to find that the companies I most associated with machine vision, DVT, Cognex and Keyence, did not have a booth at the show.

Since that time Cognex has bought DVT, and other than the Easybuilder software that they incorporated into Insight, DVT is no more. They still didn’t have a presence at the show, despite being located in Boston.

Over the 20+ years since I last attended the show technology has changed a lot. Microprocessors and single-board computers now interface with very inexpensive CCD cameras, and there is a new open software platform called Open CV. I have played around with the Raspberry Pi and an infrared camera, and hope to free up some time to explore it more. Check out some of the other videos on my Youtube channel to see an example of Phil Scruggs work with OpenCV.

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