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Accelerate AI-driven machine vision systems

BitFlow has announced full production of its Claxon CXP-12 frame grabbers, designed for NVIDIA GPU-accelerated machine vision. Across five models, the CoaXPress 2.0 lineup delivers up to 50 Gbps -- five times 10 GigE Vision -- eliminating data bottlenecks. The full CXP-12 specification ensures deterministic, high-bandwidth streaming to unleash modern AI inference models.
Learn more.

Millimeter-wave imaging inspection in real time

With its new quality and inspection R&S IMAGER millimeter-wave scanner, Rohde & Schwarz aims to simplify the industrial inspection of packaged products. The system sees through common packaging materials at production speed without using X-rays, protecting both products and operators. The high-contrast 3D images are used as digital twins and can be automatically integrated into AI-powered fault-detection systems. Sees through plastics, cardboard, and composites. Applications include food and beverage, pharmaceuticals, logistics.
Learn more.

What are single-loop process controllers?

PLCs are powerful, but complex control isn't always necessary. For standalone processes requiring single-variable monitoring -- like temperature, pressure, or flow -- a single-loop controller is ideal. See how single-loop controllers can streamline your next project.
Read the AutomationDirect tech tip.

Great Resources: Flexible circuit design guide

Tech-Etch uses advanced techniques to manufacture flex and rigid-flex circuits to exacting customer specs. Special processes include selective plating a single circuit with two different finishes, contoured circuits with variable metal thickness, semi-additive and subtractive techniques, open window or cantilevered contact leads, plus SMT for component assembly. Tech-Etch specializes in flexible circuits for medical, telecommunications, aerospace, semiconductor, and other high-reliability electronic applications.
Learn about flex circuits and get the guide (no registration required).

EMI Investigations: New immunity development system

Saelig Company announces the Langer E1 Immunity Development System for EMI investigations. This compact, affordable kit simulates burst and ESD interference to pinpoint layout weak spots down to IC pins. By eliminating "black box" guesswork early in development, engineers can efficiently identify coupling mechanisms, test measures, and resolve immunity issues before compliance failure.
Learn more and see it in action.

Battery packs for unmanned aerial vehicles

Re:Build Manufacturing has launched U.S.-assembled, NDAA-compliant lithium-ion battery packs for commercial, public safety, and defense UAV applications. Available in Core, Power, and Performance series, the packs use non-FEOC cells and are produced at Re:Build's advanced facility in New Kensington, PA. Re:Build also offers custom pack and battery management system development.
Learn more.

Easy-to-use precision measurement system

Optical Gaging Products has announced the StarLite S1, a compact, semi-automatic 3-axis video measurement system. It combines fully automatic video measurements with manual stage motion and features an IntelliCentric-S optical system for high-resolution images. Powered by Measure-X software, this system delivers fast, repeatable, high-accuracy results, making it ideal for both shop-floor and quality-control applications.
Learn more.

Why a soccer kick bends the ball path: SOLIDWORKS simulation

With SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation, you can virtually test a ball's flight path and see the science behind its amazing trajectory. Visualize anything you want to test, including the physics that make a ball curve and dip, to optimize performance and reduce physical testing. See the SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation study setup and learn about the Magnus effect where a spinning object moving through a fluid curves away from its straight path. [Credit: Screenshot courtesy of SOLIDWORKS]
View the video.

Lightning-fast in-line verification, high-performance barcode reading

The Omron VHV5 Barcode Reader now combines high-performance barcode reading and calibrated ISO verification in one device. Replacing offline sample checks, it delivers 100% inline verification at production speeds up to 1,200 parts per minute. With flexible lighting, the VHV5 easily inspects labels and Direct Part Marks, even on challenging curved or irregular surfaces.
Learn more.

How to choose the right industrial Ethernet switch

Antaira Technologies breaks down 10 mission-critical capabilities separating industrial-grade switches from commercial compromises. Even if you aren't in IT engineering, you will find valuable networking knowledge in this guide to protect vital infrastructure.
Read the full article.

New CAM software cuts robotic machining deployment

At Automate (Booth #4476), RoboDK will showcase RoboDK CAM, which generates robotic machining programs directly from CAD files. Designed for easy deployment, it cuts setup time by up to 40%. Live demonstrations will show users how to create collision-free robot motion straight from CAD data, eliminating manual line-by-line coding.
Learn more about RoboDK CAM.

AI Tools You Can Use: What is OpenClaw? How do I get it and use it?

OpenClaw is trending big time right now, but what is it? The YouTubers over at Create a Pro Website run through the basics of what you need to know and how to implement it. Basically, OpenClaw is a next-gen 24/7 AI assistant that lives on your computer and can perform actions for you. You talk to it through a chat app. You can set it up to do real work such as alert you to important emails, answer emails for you, manage your calendar and travel, and so much more. There is a great intro video here and also a longer, very thorough step-by-step video to setting up OpenClaw.
View the OpenClaw intro video.
View the OpenClaw setup video.

New! 6-digit programmable display/controller

Bristol Instruments has released the OM 403UNI Series displays/ controllers, allowing users to monitor two or three simultaneous functions. Configured via OM Link software or front-panel buttons, they feature four- or six-digit displays with +/-0.05% of f.s. range accuracy. They function as numeric/bar-graph displays, controllers, data recorders, or accumulators. Additionally, they detect and alert users to error conditions like broken sensor wires.
Learn more.

Mini edge AI systems for vision, generative AI

As enterprises transition from PoC to real-world edge AI deployment, Aetina has launched its Mini Series Edge AI systems. Powered by NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano and NX modules, these compact, fanless systems deliver high-performance vision and generative AI inference. Engineered for demanding industrial environments, they offer flexible camera connectivity, space-saving designs, and long-term reliability to accelerate smart infrastructure.
Learn more.

Thermal imaging on the quality control line

On a high-speed food and beverage line, what you can see is not always what is happening. Thermal imaging adds a different layer of control. Instead of relying on surface appearance, it measures heat distribution as seals are formed and products move through the line, providing continuous, 100% in-line inspection instead of just sampling.
Read the full article.

Ultra-small spectrometer yields the power of a device 1,000 times larger

The tiny, relatively inexpensive devices could be used for customized astronomy research, among many other uses.

By Emily Cerf, University of California - Santa Cruz

Spectrometers are technology for reading light that date back to the era of famed 17th-century physicist Isaac Newton. They work by breaking down light waves into their different colors -- or spectra -- to provide information about the makeup of the objects being measured.

UC Santa Cruz researchers are designing new ways to make spectrometers that are ultra-small but still very powerful, to be used for anything from detecting disease to observing stars in distant galaxies. Their inexpensive production cost makes them more accessible and customizable for specific applications.

The team of researchers, led by an interdisciplinary collaboration between UC Santa Cruz (UCSC) Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Holger Schmidt and Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kevin Bundy, published the details of their device in a paper in APL Photonics, a premier journal in the field.

The researchers demonstrate a novel, extremely high-performance spectrometer that can measure light with a 0.05 nanometers (nm) wavelength resolution. That's about 1.6 million times smaller than the width of a human hair -- and the same resolution that can be achieved on a device 1,000 times bigger.

"That's essentially as good as a big, standard, expensive spectrometer," said Schmidt, the senior author on the paper and a long-time expert in developing chips for light detection. "That's really pretty impressive and very competitive."

Miniature devices
Miniaturizing spectrometers is an active area of research, as spectrometers are used in many fields but can be as big as a three-story building and extremely expensive. However, miniaturized spectrometers often do not perform as well as bigger instruments, or they are very difficult and expensive to manufacture because they require extremely precise nanofabrication.

UCSC researchers have created a device that is able to achieve high performance without such costly manufacturing. Their device is a miniature, high-powered waveguide that is mounted on a chip and used to guide light into a specific pattern, depending on its color.

This simulation shows a top-down view of how different light patterns in red and green are generated when fed with input from a waveguide on the left. [Credit: Image courtesy of UC Santa Cruz]

 

 

 

 

Information from the chip is fed into a machine learning algorithm that reads the patterns created by different wavelengths of light in order to reconstruct the image with extremely high accuracy and precision -- an approach called "reconstructive" spectrometry. This technique produces accurate results because the machine learning algorithms don't require highly precise input to be able to distinguish the light patterns, and they can constantly improve upon their own performance and optimize themselves to the hardware.

Red laser light is coupled into a spectrometer chip with an optical fiber from the left. The light travels along the chip until it is scattered out the the top in a waveguide section on the right. [Credit: Image courtesy of UC Santa Cruz]

 

 

 

 

Because of this, the researchers can make the chips with relatively easy and inexpensive fabrication techniques, in a process that takes hours rather than weeks. The lightweight, compact chips for this project were designed at UCSC. They were fabricated and optimized at Brigham Young University in partnership with Schmidt's longtime collaborator Professor Aaron Hawkins and his undergraduate students.

"Compared to more sophisticated chip design, this only requires one photolithography mask, which makes the fabrication much easier and much faster," Hawkins said. "Someone with some basic capabilities could reproduce this and create a similar device tuned to their own needs."

Reading the stars
The researchers envision this technology can be used for a wide range of applications, though their preliminary focus is to create powerful instruments for astronomy research. Because their devices are relatively inexpensive, astronomers could specialize them to their specific research interests, which is practically impossible on much larger instruments that cost millions of dollars.

The research team is working to make the chips functional on the UC-operated Lick Observatory telescope, first to take in light from a star and later to study other astronomical events. With such high accuracy on these devices, astronomers could start to understand phenomena such as the makeup of atmospheres on exoplanets, or probing the nature of dark matter in faint dwarf galaxies. The comparatively low cost of these devices would make it easier for scientists to optimize them for their specific research interests, something nearly impossible on traditional devices.

Leveraging long-standing expertise at UCSC in adaptive optics systems for astronomy, the researchers are collaborating to figure out how to best capture the faint glimmers of light from distant stars and galaxies and feed it into the miniaturized spectrometer.

"In astronomy, when you try to put something on a telescope and get light through it, you always discover new challenges -- it's much harder than just doing it in the lab. The beauty of this collaboration is that we actually have a telescope, and we can try deploying these devices on the telescope with a good adaptive optics system," Bundy said.

Uses for health and beyond
Beyond astronomy, the research team shows in this paper that the tool is capable of fluorescence detection, which is a noninvasive imaging technique used for many medical applications, such as cancer screening and infectious disease detection.

In the future, they plan to develop the technology for Raman scattering analysis. This is a technique that uses light scattering for the detection of any unique molecule, often used as a specialized test to look for a specific chemical substance, such as the presence of drugs in the human body or toxic pollutants in the environment. Because the system is so straightforward and does not require the use of heavy instrumentation or fluidics like other techniques, it would be convenient and robust for use in the field.

The researchers also demonstrate the compact waveguides can be placed alongside each other to enhance the performance of the system, as each chip can measure a different spectra and provide more information about whatever light it is observing. In the paper, the researchers demonstrate the power of four waveguides working together, but Schmidt envisions that hundreds of chips could be used at once.

This is the first device shown to be able to use multiple chips at once in this way. The researchers will continue to work to improve the sensitivity of the device to get even higher spectral resolution.

Published October 2024

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