Apollo Imaging Technologies

Apollo Imaging Technologies is a group of engineers that worked together "in a previous life" developing image processing products, both hardware and software. We found that no product available met our requirements: high processing horsepower, fast image acquisition time and competitive costs. We didn't need a lot of prepackaged software, other th... an development tools, since our problem was pretty unique. We had to solve it the old fashioned way: "C" code. We needed a packaged product with a high resolution image sensor and high performance processing. We had neither the space nor budget for the conventional camera/frame grabber/PC solution; nor was it likely that we could get the processing performance in that configuration. We needed a full image processing system in a package approximately the size of the camera. Like it or not, we had to develop a "smart camera" ourselves. We found that building a reasonably state of the art smart camera, while not winning a Nobel prize for any of us, was not as simple as the various manufacturer's data sheets would indicate. There were some problems, some not altogether obvious. Solved with the usual combination of late nights and lots of caffeine. Equal parts inspiration and perspiration. You know the drill. There are sophisticated smart cameras on the market (see www.dvtsensors.com ; www.bannerengineering.com; www.keyence.com; www.cognex.com). These companies make "sensors" aimed at the end user market. In order to accomplish this, they supply extensive software to help the end user apply their products. You get a lot of support, training, etc. You pay for all this. If this is the solution you need, go to these companies; they make good products and we aren't really competing with them. If you have a problem that requires you to do all the heavy lifting in "C" and need a high performance platform at a reasonable price to do it on, then you should care and read on. In summary, they are focused on the end user; we are focused on the OEM. We thought that if we had this ...Read More