Smart Factory Solutions
EasyMVC Enables Rapid Smart Factory Vision Development 
With the evolution of Smart Factories, a wide range of sensors on equipment and machines are required at various manufacturing stages to collect data that can be used to monitor and control a diverse array of production processes. One of the most challenging types of sensor systems to design are vision systems which enable automated process control or provides alerts for human operator intervention. Macnica’s EasyMVC Machine Vision Camera development kit has been specifically designed to reduce the development learning curve of machine vision camera systems.
The EasyMVC development kit is a complete camera platform that includes hardware and software source code, schematics, and the bill of materials. This development kit consists of three boards (image sensor, Intel FPGA, and interface); the modular design permits each section to be modified with minimal effort to accommodate application-specific requirements for evaluation and system implementation (i.e., custom sensor boards). Currently, two sensors (Sony IMX420 and IMX421) and five system interface options (HDMI, USB 3.0, CoaXPress, 1GigE, and 10GigE) are available.

Key Features
  • FPGA Board with an Intel® Cyclone® 10 GX 150KLE FPGA
  • Sensor Board Options
  • Sony IMX420 or IMX421 sensors
  • SLVS-EC 8-lane interface and Global Shutter
  • Interface Board Options
  • HDMI® interface for connection to LCD monitor
  • USB 3.0 Vison for connection to a PC
  • CoaXPress 1.1.1 interface for connection to a frame grabber
  • 1G and 10G Ethernet Vision with IEEE1588 for a network type connection

Key Benefits
  • Operational reference platform for evaluation of system performance requirements
  • Complete design support package to accelerate the implementation of vision camera systems
EasyMVC Sony Sensor Options
The sensors featured on Macnica’s EasyMVC development kits are from Sony’s Pregius family – they are all low noise, high sensitivity CMOS image sensors using global shutter technology. Global shutter enables the camera to freeze rapidly moving objects, capturing clean frames without blurring. This also means that the camera itself can be moving and still capture sharp images. All the sensors offer region of interest (ROI), subsampling, and binning, enabling very versatile designs.
The IMX421 offers 2.86M pixels, capturing HD images at frame rates up to 371fps, and a staggering 780fps max at lower resolutions.
 
The IMX420 has 7.10M pixels making it a significant step up for many applications requiring more resolution. This sensor is a perfect fit for finer details or image a much larger span while maintaining good resolution over the whole area.

Releasing later this year is the IMX530 for the Easy MVC development kit. The IMX530 offers an impressive 24.55M pixels, with a global shutter, providing distortion-free, high-resolution images of moving objects.  It is part of the next-generation Pregius S CMOS image sensor family that uses back-illuminated pixels with a stacked structure to create a compact sensor. 
 
Macnica maintains many alternative reference designs; ask about other sensors you may be interested in.
New Touch Monitors for Smart Factory Applications
Macnica offers new 15.6” & 21.5” monitors from Lilliput which can be used for various Smart Factory applications such as process monitoring, control monitoring, motion control, factory automation, and machine vision inspection. Lilliput is a key partner of Macnica with more than 20 years of experience in the monitor market, and they have a strong R&D department to meet any spec requirements. Lilliput also offers certifications such as CE and FCC with excellent quality at a very competitive price.

Key Features:
  • 10-point capacitive touch screen
  • 1000cd/m² high brightness
  • IP64 Rating front panel.
  • Supports multiple video input interfaces: HDMI, VGA, AV
  • Supports audio input
  • Supports HDMI 4K 30Hz
  • Supports Windows XP/7/8/8.1/10, Android, Linux and MAC OS

Contact the Macnica Displays Team to schedule a demo.
Smart Factory solutions by iEi offer a powerful and modular approach to machine vision and inspection
Known for their robust and high-performance industrial embedded systems, iEi leverages its partnerships with Intel and Microsoft to bring powerful solutions to the Smart Factory space. Their rack-mount FLEX B200 embedded system sports a hefty Intel Xeon CPU, great RAID options, and high-end slots for expansion, connectivity, and accelerators. And to fill those slots for maximum modularity and performance, they offer accelerator cards like the Mustang F100 Intel FPGA-based accelerator – and multi-port Ethernet cards with plenty of power for IP inspection cameras.  It all works with Intel’s OpenVINO tools for AI implementation.
  • Intel® Core™/Xeon processor
  • 4 hot-swappable, accessible drive bays for RAID 0/1/5/10
  • PCIe 3.0 by 4 and PCIe 3.0 by 8 slots (for accelerators, capture cards, Ethernet, etc)
  • M.2, NVME, dual displays and more
  • Half height, half length, double slot
  • Low latency, highly customizble computing with Intel FPGA’s, floating point, inference workloads
  • AI edge computing ready with Intel OpenVINO toolset

  • 4 GbE ports with power
  • GbE, PCIe x 1, 12-24V input
  • Up to 90 Watts supported (POE)
  • Link aggregation, jumbo frames
  • 6-port and 2-port versions available
AI Stack and Broadband Sensing in a Single Box

Background
CITIZEN MACHINERY develops automatic lathes and pushes forward the machine tool business leveraging its unique technology, ease-of-use, and processing know-how as the second pillar of the Citizen Group after the globally renown watch business.

Challenge
To offer a failure prediction system for the automatic lathes they sell. Previously, the focus was on regular maintenance, where parts requiring maintenance were replaced at specific intervals, and reactive maintenance, where parts were replaced at the time of failure, both relying heavily on human judgment and resulting in increased cost to customers. But, the new system aims to enable condition-based maintenance where the condition is quantified and parts are replaced only when replacement is deemed necessary.

Solution
SENSPIDER is equipped not only with data logger functionalities but also with a “brain” that can analyze the data using an AI model in a compact form factor that can be installed on their automatic lathes. CITIZEN MACHINERY currently uses SENSPIDER in its own manufacturing processes to improve visibility, and many SENSPIDERs have been deployed in the production lines of domestic and overseas factories.

Customer Feedback
“It used to take us a long time to understand the condition based on temperature and noise, but now we use SENSPIDER for visualization, which helps improve quality in the manufacturing process," assesses Mr. Daigo Nakahara.
 
“With SENSPIDER’s vibration measurement, data can be collected properly and the equipment is easy to use. The support is great. When we have questions, we get an answer quickly. The team even visits our site for troubleshooting,” says Mr. Nakahara.
Macnica - Empowering Efficient Innovation
About Macnica Americas
Macnica Americas, Inc. is the North America division of Macnica Fuji Electronics Holdings, Inc., a $5.2B global leader in technology product distribution, technical support, and design services.
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