Development of SBC based machine-vision system for PCB board assembly Automatic Optical Inspection

Visual Inspection is an essential part in the quality control in electronic manufacturing industry, especially in PCB assembly processes. With the advance of surface mount technology as a means to increase automation level in electronic assembly line, with production volume achieving thousands of board per day, manual visual inspection becomes increasingly prohitive. For this purpose, Automatic Optical Inspection (AOI) based on machine vision can be used. This method, however requires considerable amount of investment that is not affordable by small companies. In this research work, a low-cost machine vision based on an SBC (Single Board Computer) is developed. Raspberry-Pi™ as a populer SBC offers capability of being interfaced with camera and of running Linux-based operating system such as Ubuntu™. These capabilities enable this board to be used to run sophisticated image-processing programs for machine vision.