5 STEPS TO EASILY INSTALL A MACHINE VISION CAMERA AND ACQUIRE AN IMAGE
Option 1: Use autoexposure
This is the most easy option. Therefore set the ExposureAuto feature to Once or continuous. (Under: Remote device>Acquisition control>ExposureAuto)
Option 2: Set a fixed exposure time
(Under: Remote device>Acquisition control>ExposureTime)
Please note that the exposure time is in us. So 40000us = 40ms. By increasing the exposure time the image will get brighter but it can influence the framerate and motionblur.
The max framerate of the Machine Vision Camera is 1000/exposuretime (ms). With an exposure time of 40ms the max framerate is 1000/40=25fps. If you are imaging a still object please increase the exposure time till you have the desired brightness.
For moving objects the exposure time of the Machine Vision Camera is critical. If the exposure time is too long the image will get blurry.
A common calculation states that the maximum movement of the object should not be larger then half a pixel. To calculate we assume the following. Our field of view is 1000x600mm and our Machine Vision Camera has 1000x600pixels resolution. So 1pixel/1mm. If an object moves with 1m/second this will be 1000mm/second. We will start noticing motion blur if the object moves with more then half a pixel so that is 0,5 * 1pixel/1mm= 0.5mm. The maximum exposure time is then (max object movement=0.5mm) / (object speed = 1000mm) = 0.0005seconds = 0.5ms. So in that case you should set the ExposureTime value of the Machine Vision camera to 0.5x1000=500us
GigE Camera
When using one (or more) ethernet GigE camera and you don't have live images, the packets size and packets delay can be the problem.
Sometime you can encounter issues such as frames overlapping, so the previous image is partially over-imposed on the new one.
From programming software you may see errors such as failed to get image, getting image failed, incomplete frame.
Please optimize these values by slowly increasing them until you receive live images or no longer have problems with image.
On the galaxy software:
From Python you can set the values by adding these lines:
self.cam.GevSCPSPacketSize.set(8192)
self.cam.GevSCPD.set(1000)
**(8192/1000 are sample values)
When using multiple camera you need to change the GevSCPS and GevSCPD to specific values, please refer to this page (bottom): FRAME CALCULATOR;
See also our article about connecting multiple GigE cameras to one ethernet-port.