Advantech, a leading industrial edge AI solutions provider, has announced the release of a new industrial AI camera — the ICAM-520. Embedded with NVIDIA® Xavier NX, Advantech’s ICAM-520 combines an industrial-grade SONY MX 296 image sensor, advanced LED lighting, and a variable focus lens with image acquisition and AI computing capabilities.

Accelerating the development and deployment of cloud-to-edge vision AI applications

The Advantech ICAM-520 places an NVIDIA Xavier NX AI computing module 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 servers, and AI inference systems. ICAM-520 has an FPGA-based trigger input, strobe light, and MIPI interface, which also allows ICAM-520 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.

For advanced AI computing, NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX, with up to 21 TOPS of accelerated computing, delivers the horsepower to run modern neural networks in parallel and process data. Users can acquire images and perform labeling, training, and inferencing using the ICAM-520. This feature significantly shortens the development period of an AI system.

Advantech’s ICAM-520 also supports a robust array of software including NVIDIA JetPack SDK, DeepStream SDK, QV4L2, the VLC (RTSP) display utility, and web-based utilities. AI developers can use C/C++, Python or Graph Composer, or NVIDIA’s low-code tool to quickly integrate pre-trained models for speedy deployment within vision systems.

An all-in-one solution reduces vision system installation and maintenance effort

ICAM-520 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 for 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-520 allow the user to take snapshots or customize their functions. Users just need to connect ICAM-520 and control the system using LAN to implement vision systems. ICAM-520 has a USB interface and provides flexibility for customers to connect solutions using communication modules for Wi-Fi and 5G applications. This lowers the barrier to entry for AI software developers and enables them to easily implement AI vision applications. Advantech ICAM-520 provides a broad support package that enables customers to easily integrate software and hardware.

ICAM-520 combines lighting, a camera, and AI computing within a compact system (82 x 121 x 63 mm). This not only saves space but also saves time that would be needed to install additional AI computing equipment. In addition, its ruggedized fanless design is capable of enduring operation in harsh factory environments.