Avnet Electronics Marketing adds ’embedded brains’ to machine vision with new smart vision development kit

 Avnet Electronics Marketing, an operating group of Avnet, Inc. (NYSE: AVT) is helping to eliminate time and cost barriers to develop industry-leading embedded machine vision applications with today’s release of the Smart Vision Development Kit featuring the Xilinx Zynq-7015 PicoZed System-on-Module (SOM). The low-cost, all-in-one kit enables engineers in markets such as banking, medical scanning, traffic management, point of sales terminals and gaming to begin designing real-time embedded vision applications within five minutes of opening the box. The low cost development kit will be demonstrated at the Vision Stuttgart event November 4-6 in Germany. 

The Smart Vision Development Kit — the product of collaboration between Avnet, Xilinx and leading machine vision partner Sensor to Image — provides a complete hardware system for designing an image processing system from sensor input to digital interface or video output. The kit builds on the PicoZed SOM by providing a carrier card supporting all essential machine vision protocols, including GigEVision (GEV), USB3Vision (U3V) and CoaXPress (CXP) and swappable camera module featuring an image sensor from Aptina. 

Optional camera modules supported by the kit include ON Semiconductor’s new PYTHON image sensor family and Toshiba America Electronic Components Inc. (TAEC) TCM3232PB full HD (1080p high-definition) image sensor, newly designed for security and surveillance applications. The PYTHON sensor image family is ideal for high-end machine vision applications and features a true pipelined and triggered global shutter. TEAC’s TCM3232PB delivers high-quality video capture at 60 frames per second utilizing Toshiba’s High Dynamic Range (HDR) technology for better real-time image quality. 

“As machine vision technology rapidly matures and applications for embedded vision expand, designers are being challenged to develop systems that can capture and process images as quickly and accurately as the human eye,” said Mario Bergeron, technical marketing engineer, Avnet Electronics Marketing. “This new Smart Vision Development Kit combines the high performance and low cost of the Zynq-7015 PicoZed SOM with industry leading smart and machine vision technology and tools, which enable engineers to deliver both the usability and performance standard expected by users today, while providing a true shortcut from concept to production.” 

“The ability to add intelligence, or ‘embedded brains,’ to traditional machine vision cameras opens up a wealth of possibilities for customers to explore real-time analytics, reducing interface bandwidth requirements and reaching faster decisions by making calculations at the camera node,” said Yvonne Lin, medical and vision manager, Xilinx. “With this kit, Avnet has once again found a way to enable customers to leverage the performance of our Zynq-7000 device family to drive development of state of the art embedded vision applications, while minimizing development risk and accelerating time to market.” 

“With an optional add on card to CameraLink, this kit has covered all the interface standards for machine vision. The interface IPs available are Automated Imaging Association (AIA) and Japan Industrial Imaging Association (JIIA) compliant and available as evaluation on this platform for enhanced out of box experience,” said Werner Feith from Sensor to Image. “Collaborating with Avnet and Xilinx, we can enable machine vision interfaces to a broader market and customer base.” 

The Smart Vision Development Kit cost is $595, and includes:

•             Xilinx Zynq-7015 PicoZed SOM

•             Smart Vision Carrier Board (supporting ZYNQ PS Ethernet, GigEVision, CoaXPress, USB3Vision and HDMI)

•             Aptina 1.2MP Machine Vision Sensor Board

•             Universal Power Adapters

•             MicroUSB cable

•             Xilinx Vivado® Design Edition license voucher (device locked to Zynq-7015)

•             Sensor to Image – Demo versions of GEV, CXP and U3V IP cores

•             Embedded Visual Applets from Silicon Software – Demo version

•             HALCONtrailrun – Demo version of leading machine vision library

•             User Guides and Reference Designs

For further information on the Smart Vision Development Kit, visit the picoZed.org web site.