The manufacturing industry is a very competitive environment. Customers demand the highest quality at the lowest cost and are able to easily search a global economy for that perfect component. For leading manufacturers to remain competitive, they must continually adopt the latest technology, as this will enable them to deliver higher quality products at lower costs. Machine vision is an integral part of a high-quality production process. Of all the machine vision standards available on the market, the Camera Link HS (CLHS) protocol leads in reliability, cost, and throughput—and most importantly supports fiber optic cabling. This latter feature sets CLHS apart because of the immense benefits fiber optic cabling brings to the manufacturing industry.
“Smart” cameras are usually the go-to solution for industrial engineers because of their small size and ease of use. These cameras include an image sensor, an internal processing unit, and often feature built-in algorithms, and are designed for specific tasks like bar code reading, or pattern-matching. Often, these cameras include a lens and lighting which further simplifies the system design. Unfortunately, typical “smart” cameras can only handle simple tasks at relatively low throughput.