Cognex Corporation (www.cognex.com) has unveiled a unique utility that is specifically designed for production, control and maintenance engineers.

Offering a unique point and click interface, the Cognex Explorer control center provides a graphical view of the Cognex vision systems, visualization systems and ID readers connected to the network.

“The Cognex Explorer control center was designed to help our customers achieve additional efficiency improvements and cost savings when using Cognex vision systems, ID products or visualization platforms. It eliminates the complexities of installing and maintaining automation equipment,” said Carl Gerst, Vice President and Business Unit Manager, ID Products.

Its powerful maintenance tools allow users to easily restore or clone systems when installing more systems to the network, simultaneously backup and restore multiple systems and execute firmware upgrades.

In addition, the easy-to-use Cognex Explorer also has the ability to display the type, status and identity of all Ethernet-connected In-Sight vision system, VisionView devises and DataMan ID readers on the network.

Available free of charge to all Cognex customers, the Cognex Explorer control center allows users to view device setting such as firmware/software versions and IP addresses, while providing licenses for VisionView.

“Once a Cognex product has been deployed, we want to make it easier for our customers to monitor and maintain the system with one common utility. Cognex Explorer is a convenient way to monitor, manage and maintain all deployed Cognex products on a network regardless of where they are located,” added Mr. Gerst.