MVTec have now released the latest maintenance update to the HALCON 12 machine vision software. HALCON 12.0.2 will contain several updates and feature enhancements, the most notable of which is an improved barcode reader.
With HALCON 12.0.2, MVTec has significantly improved the reliability of the bar code reader particularly for images that are overexposed, or for codes that have been printed with too much ink (print growth). Overexposure causes the dark bars of the code to appear much thinner and therefore difficult to read. With HALCON 12.0.2 it is now possible to read bar codes with line widths appearing as thin as 5% of their actual width due to overexposure. Similarly, the bar code reader in HALCON 12.0.2 can now read codes with bars that are nearly twice as large as intended – up to 95% print growth.
The bar code reader for 2/5 Industrial and 2/5 Interleaved code types has also been improved with default parameter modifications designed to reduce multiple misreads in images containing clutter and/or text.
Data code reader enhancements in HALCON 12.0.2 include:
- Additional parameters for evaluating the print quality of data codes based on the AIM DPM-1-2006 and ISO/IEC 15415 standards.
- The ability to read QR codes with Chinese characters that are encoded according to GBT 18284-2000, the Chinese national standard.
Beyond identification tools, HALCON 12.0.2 also includes:
- A revised GigE Vision streaming filter that supports Windows 10
- A new example program that demonstrates how to handle parallel programming in machine vision applications
- improvements to the HDevEngine environment that speed up program runtimes.
In addition, image acquisition interfaces that use the GeniCam standard (USB3 Vision, GeniCam GenTL, and GigE Vision) have been updated to the latest GenApi reference implementation (version 3.0.0). The new GenApi version runs faster and requires less storage.
New to HALCON 12? Download a trial version now!
Watch MVTec’s video on bar code reading improvements with HALCON 12.02