VisionPro requires that you attach a USB security key to your computer to ensure the software is properly authorized for use. Your Cognex sales representative can provide a USB security key programmed with the desired licenses for your vision application. Attach the key to your computer before you launch any VisionPro application. The topic VisionPro Licenses lists all the VisionPro licenses required by specific vision tools.
See the following sections for more information:
As your application runs, the Cognex Security Service verifies the presence of the key and the licenses for the vision tools that you want to use:
You can plug the key into a USB hub that is connected to multiple computers, but only one computer can use the key at any time. You cannot share the license information on a security key with multiple computers.
The Cognex Security Service includes a Windows scheduled task that runs on your computer every day and notifies you if any licenses on your security key will expire within the next 30 days. The task displays a balloon alert and notification in the system tray:
Cognex sets a software update maintenance period on each USB security key, which enables the key to validate VisionPro based on the release year for that version. For example, your USB security key can be programmed to validate any version of VisionPro released in 2018 or 2019 exclusively.
The software update maintenance period appears in a description of the security key you can view using the Cogtool utility or from within your vision application, as described in the topic VisionPro Licenses. The following is an example of a software update maintenance period between January 2018 and December 2019:
SWUP: {2018.1-2019.12}With this maintenance period, the security key will work with any version of VisionPro released between January 1st, 2018 through December 31st, 2019, indefinitely.