The center of a hundred square meter motion picture studio stage glistens with illumination. A half dozen people are slowly moving around the stage. Their clothes all look similar, but not from this century. It seems as though small points of light are dancing in the same rhythm as the movements of the people on the stage. Abruptly, this subdued scenario changes and the actors are fighting with each other. After a few seconds, a loud “thank you” resounds and everyone immediately relaxes. We are guests at a facility of Giant Studios located in Los Angeles, California in the USA.

Basler’s new scout cameras have proven their ability to perform in a challenging machine vision application and are now running in several systems around the world. The camera design-in process for these systems started in mid 2006 and was finished by the end of 2006. This demonstrates a rapid design-in cycle and highlights the ease of integration of Basler’s Gigabit Ethernet cameras in combination with our pylon driver and software package.

After successful live demonstrations at various trade shows at the end of 2006, the first members of the new sprint family of line scan cameras will enter series production during the third quarter of this year.

As a first step, the monochrome versions of the sprint family members with 4k resolution will be available. Next, the mono and color versions of the 2k family members along with the color versions of the 4k cameras will follow.

Basler’s scout and pioneer camera series have won a 2007 iF Product Design Award in the “Industry / Buildings” category. The housing design for the two camera series was developed by Basler-VC engineers working in close collaboration with Bachorski Design. Specializing in industrial design, this agency supported Basler during the entire product development cycle and was instrumental in creating an esthetically pleasing yet functional design that could meet the requirements of Basler’s customers.

A developing trend on the internet is to provide video clips and short movies in addition to the classic formats of plain text and images. News portals such as CCN and social sites such as YouTube make use of video to present information in a way that is easier to understand. The underlying technology for handling video data streams in most of these applications is DirectShow® from Microsoft. In this article, we answer the question: “How can DirectShow benefit the machine vision industry and meet its needs?” This is an especially relevant question if we remember the past boosts provided to the industry by Gigabit Ethernet and IEEE 1394 technology.

The Basler A500 series is a family of high-speed cameras with a resolution of 1.3 megapixels and variants that capture images at up to 74 or 500 frames per second (fps) at full resolution. All A500 camera models are available in mono and in color. By using the camera’s area of interest (AOI) function, it’s possible to focus on the essential area of an object and to operate at even higher frame rates. This high speed, along with a reliable and easy to use Camera Link interface, makes the A500 family a powerful, flexible tool appropriate for a wide variety of demanding vision applications.

On March 1, 2007, Brigitte Klug started her new role as a VC sales assistant. Brigitte has been with Basler for 7 years and finished her commercial apprenticeship in 2003. Brigitte brings a wealth of experience and a strong customer orientation from her previous position in Vision Systems.