Industrial camera is a key component in the application of machine vision system. Its most essential function is to transform optical signal into high-definition industrial camera for orderly electrical signal. Choosing the right camera is also an important part in the design of machine vision system. The camera not only directly determines the image resolution and image quality, but also is directly related to the operation mode of the whole system. Compared with the traditional civilian camera (camera), industrial camera has high image stability, high transmission ability and high anti-interference ability. At present, most industrial cameras on the market are based on CCD and CMOS chips.

Intelligent camera is not a simple camera, but a highly integrated micro machine vision. It integrates the image acquisition and processing and communication functions into a single camera, thus providing a multi-functional, modular, high reliability, easy to implement machine vision solution. At the same time, due to the application of the latest DSP, FPGA and large capacity storage technology, its intelligent degree is constantly improved, which can meet the application needs of a variety of machine vision fields.

The functions of each part of the smart camera are as follows:

1. Image acquisition unit: in intelligent camera, image acquisition unit is equivalent to CCD / CMOS camera and image acquisition card in general sense. It converts optical image into analog / digital image and outputs it to image processing unit.

2. Image processing unit: image processing unit is similar to image acquisition and processing card. It can store the image data of image acquisition unit in real time and process the image with the support of image processing software.

3. Image processing software: the image processing software mainly completes the image processing function under the support of the hardware environment of the image processing unit. Such as geometric edge extraction, blob, gray histogram, OCV / ovr, simple location and search. In the smart camera, the above algorithms are packaged into fixed modules, which can be applied directly without programming.

4. Network communication device: an important part of intelligent camera of network communication device, mainly completes the communication task of control information and image data. Intelligent cameras usually have built-in Ethernet communication devices, and support a variety of standard network and bus protocols, so that multiple intelligent cameras can form a larger machine vision system.