Advantech Releases All-in-one AI Camera for Industrial AI Vision Applications

By Bhalchandra Chorghade, Editor, CNCTimes.com

Advantech, a leading industrial edge AI solutions provider, has announced the release of a new edge industrial AI camera—the ICAM-500. Embedded with NVIDIA Jetson Nano, Advantech’s ICAM-500 combines an industrial-grade SONY IMX 296 image sensor, advanced LED lighting, and a variable focus lens with acquisition and AI computing capabilities.

The Advantech ICAM-500 places NVIDIA Jetson Nano AI computing modules inside a  compact industrial camera system. This combines image acquisition and AI inference functionality within the same system, while reducing the latency caused by the distance between IP cameras, cloud, and AI inference systems.

ICAM-500 has an FPGA-based trigger input, lighting strobe out and MIPI interface, which also allow ICAM-500 to perform low-latency and high-bandwidth image acquisition. These features improve the efficiency of on-site AI inference, creating an excellent solution for edge AI applications—like AI automated optical inspection, AI optical character recognition, and object recognition at the edge—that require real-time responsiveness.

Advantech’s ICAM-500 also supports the NVIDIA DeepStream SDK. AI developers can use C/C++, Python or Graph Composer, NVIDIA’s low-code tool, to quickly integrate pre-trained models for speedy deployment within vision systems.

ICAM-500 is a highly integrated industrial AI camera equipped with programmable variable focus lenses, LED illumination, and SONY industrial-grade image sensors. These features reduce the effort required in installation and maintenance. The camera’s generic settings, lighting, and one-meter inspection distance satisfy most vision application requirements. In addition, the built-in buttons on ICAM-500 allow the user to take snapshots or customize their functions.

Users just need to connect ICAM-500 and control the system using LAN to implement vision systems. ICAM-500 has a USB interface and provides flexibility for customers to connect solutions for communication modules for Wi-Fi and 5G applications. This lowers the barriers to entry for AI software developers and enables them to step into vision AI applications with ease. Advantech ICAM-500 provides board support package support that enables customers to easily integrate software and hardware.

ICAM-500 combines lighting, cameras, and AI computing within a compact system (82 x 121 x 53 mm; 3.22 x 4.7 x 2.08 in). This not only saves space, but also saves vision solution providers time when installing additional AI computing equipment. In addition, its ruggedized fanless design is capable of enduring operation in harsh factory environments.

The Advantech ICAM-500 is ideal for a variety of industrial edge AI vision applications. ICAM-500 is available now.

https://www.advantech.com/en/resources?type=news

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