Embedded Vision Starterkit

The machine vision experts Allied Vision Technologies GmbH from Stadtroda and MVTec Software GmbH from Munich have combined their industry and application know-how to introduce the new Embedded Vision Starterkit. Designed to reduce the evaluation and prototyping stages of product development, this hardware and software bundle allows users to easily test embedded vision applications on the NVIDIA Jetson Nano Developer Kit. The starter kit consists of Allied Vision’s innovative Alvium 1500 C CSI-2 camera and a demo consisting of various machine vision applications based on MVTec’s comprehensive machine vision software HALCON. It is available at an attractive price of €199 or $229 and was presented to the public for the first time at Vision China on November 3 - 5, 2020 in Shenzhen, China.

Fast success with integrated solution

"The Embedded Vision Starterkit is an ideal starting point for machine vision on embedded platforms. Thanks to the Plug-and-Play design, the preset machine vision applications can be tested immediately”, says Christoph Wagner, Product Manager Embedded Vision at MVTec. "Especially regarding deep-learning-based applications, the NVIDIA Jetson platform with the JetPack SDK and its integrated GPU achieves significantly lower inference times than with a CPU. We are convinced that a starter kit like this will make embedded vision easier and more accessible for many prospective customers and thereby help open new market segments.”

Mark Schenk, Product Manager Software with Allied Vision adds: “The combination of CSI-2 camera, machine vision software, and NVIDIA’s Jetson platform is a great fit to bring industrial machine vision applications to embedded systems. For customers it is a huge benefit to have the option to choose from a broad Jetson lineup to build hardware accelerated embedded vision solutions and to switch to a different Alvium CSI-2 camera with a higher resolution or extended feature at a later stage of product development, thanks to Allied Vision's unified MIPI CSI-2 driver.”

“Powered by the Jetson platform, the starter kit with industrial camera and machine vision software makes it easier to quickly evaluate embedded vision-based applications,” said Murali Gopalakrishna, Head of Product Management for Autonomous Machines and General Manager for Robotics at NVIDIA. “This accelerates time to market for companies and developers looking to build and deploy a range of industrial IoT applications at the edge.”

Bundled machine vision know-how

The main components of the Embedded Vision Starterkit are Allied Vision’s 1.2 megapixel CSI-2 camera Alvium 1500 C-120 with the powerful ON Semi AR0135CS CMOS sensor, the machine vision software MVTec HALCON (in the form of a browser-based demo application and executable without an additional license) as well as installed MIPI CSI-2 drivers for Allied Vision cameras. The heart of the kit is a triangle-shaped circuit board, with which different application examples based on machine vision technologies such as matching, reading of bar and data codes, pose estimation, and deep-learning-based classification can be executed.

The setup is completed by an adapter board for the NVIDIA Jetson Nano Developer Kit, a CSI-2 flex cable, an S-Mount lens, and an Alvium tripod mounting plate.

With the starter kit, users can run the preinstalled application examples. Developing custom applications using HALCON's extensive toolbox is possible with a development license of MVTec HALCON (not included).

The Embedded Vision Starterkit will be available with the release of MVTec´s new HALCON 20.11 version as well as Allied Vision's CSI-2 driver for NVIDIA JetPack 4.4 SDK beginning November 20, 2020.