Front panel of the Component Placement Inspector application.

NI myRIO Vision Essentials Guide

by Dr. Ed Doering | Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

Through a mixture of written materials, video tutorials, and guided hands-on projects, students learn the essential techniques necessary to add vision to their NI myRIO project. Additionally, students create NI myRIO applications that interact with the visual world to sense motion, take physical measurements, read barcodes and printed labels, inspect products for defects, and respond to colors. Students will add LCD displays, switches, and servomotors and create a complete stand-alone application that controls physical apparatus such as a marble sorter and an auto-panning camera.

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LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Students learn and apply vision application development flows, design patterns, and architectures to design full vision processing applications that are capable of completing complex tasks
Students watch videos and complete foundational projects to learn the basics of image acquisition, sterio vision, and vision software tools
Students complete open-ended design projects that solve real-world machine vision needs, such as a coin counter, product label inspector, and auto-pan camera

COURSE ALIGNMENT

Level	University
Topic	Mechatronics, Machine Vision
Style	Project-Based Learning
Prerequisite Skills	LabVIEW experience recommended

Included Course Labs

APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT FLOW

In this project, students familiarize themselves with a development flow and then develop their own machine vision application.

DESIGN PATTERN FOR MACHINE VISION

This project introduces students to the popular state machine design pattern, especially the Queued State Machine that serves as the foundation of the Machine Vision App template LabVIEW project from which all of the projects in this lab manual may be developed.

CAMERA SETUP

In this project, students learn how to set up their camera to acquire calibrated images with a desired spatial resolution and field of view.

STEREO VISION

In this project, students learn how to set up the stereo vision apparatus, calibrate the cameras, and view the depth information as a pseudocolor image.

COIN CALIPER I

In this lab project, students concentrate on learning how to drive the software tools to make a simple application to measure the diameter of a circular coin.

COIN CALIPER II

In this lab project, students learn how to adapt the Machine Vision App template to implement a more sophisticated version of the Coin Caliper application they created in the previous project. Additionally, students follow along with the step-by-step tutorials to gain experience with the various template editing techniques.

COIN COUNTER

In this project, students create their own machine vision application that looks at a collection of coins and instantly shows the total value.

POS TERMINAL

In this project, students create their own POS terminal to tally up the total price of barcoded items, and use external switches and an LCD display to make the terminal run as a stand-alone application.

KEYED OPTICAL LOCK

In this project, students present a metal key to an optical scanner to make the decision as to whether or not to open a lock. This project integrates the classic mechanical lock and metal key with modern-day electronic locks.

DMM TEST STAND

As a part of product testing for this project, students apply a range of DC voltages and confirm the numerical display is correct for each voltage. Students create a test stand for the DMM that will sweep the applied meter voltage, visually observe and record the resulting meter readings, and then plot the measured voltage as a function of the applied voltage.

GAUGING STATION

In this project, students create a vision-based gauging station that will take a large number of dimensional measurements simultaneously with the press of a button, despite traditional manual gauging requiring tools such as dial calipers and micrometers.

PRODUCT LABEL INSPECTOR

In this project, students use the golden template technique to quickly inspect for small imperfections on a product label. This is accomplished by comparing images to a defect-free image (the golden template) and any difference regions are highlighted and counted.

COMPONENT PLACEMENT INSPECTOR

In this project, students create a mock-up of a printed circuit board component placement inspector that confirms whether or not a multitude of colored plastic bricks are properly attached to a baseboard.

MOTION DETECTOR

In this project, students have some property in a room that they would like to secure. Students will set up a webcam as a motion detector that will sound an alarm the moment that even the smallest feature in the camera’s field of view has noticeable motion, also known as optical flow velocity.

AUTO-PAN CAMERA

In this project, students create an auto-pan camera that combines a servo-mounted webcam, a position sensing algorithm based on color, and a closed-loop control system move the camera to maintain the target object in the center at the camera’s field of view.

MARBLE SORTER

In this project, students utilize a vision system to create a marble sorter based on a color camera and two servomotors that automatically sorts a hopper full of marbles into bins, one for each color of marble.

Requirements

myRIO

Provides reconfigurable I/O that allows you to teach and implement multiple design concepts with one device. Learn more

LabVIEW

LabVIEW is systems engineering software for applications that require test, measurement, and control with rapid access to hardware and data insights. Learn more

DETAILED REQUIREMENTS

Required Software

Download Academic Software, Learn About Software Licensing

myRIO Software Bundle (2013 or later)
- LabVIEW (Requires license)
- LabVIEW Real-Time Module (Requires license)
- LabVIEW myRIO Toolkit
- Vision Acquisition and Development Modules (Requires license)

Required Hardware

Purchase Engineering Education Products

myRIO (enclosed) - View Specifications
USB Webcam

Resources

TRANSLATED RESOURCES

NI myRIO Vision Essentials Guide - Japanese

Related Resources

EXPLORE

These labs have related concepts that can expand student experience.

Webcam

myRIO Integrated Project Ideas

RIO Developer Essentials Guide for Academia

NI myRIO Project Essentials Guide