Acquiring or Loading an Image

The Trigger button is used to acquire a single image from the vision system. Press the Trigger button to acquire a single image. Alternately, you can use the F5 button on your keyboard or press the button in the EasyBuilder Toolbar (the Trigger control in the Edit Acquisition Settings group must be set to Manual).

The Live Video button activates the vision system to stream images without acquiring them, allowing you to adjust the focus of the lens attached to the vision system, as well as compensate for exposure and brightness. Your application will function optimally when your images are clearly focused and the brightness is balanced to maximize contrast.

The Focus Metric provided below the image helps you to determine an image focus score, which indicates the degree to which the image, or a region of the image (defined by using the Focus Region button), includes the smallest resolvable features in a "scene" (i.e., the object and its background, as captured in the image).

Adjusting Focus

In-Sight 5000 Series, In-Sight Micro Series, In-Sight 7000 Series and In-Sight 8000 Series Vision System with C-Mount Lens

1. Press the Live Video button. Alternately, you can press the button in the EasyBuilder Toolbar.

   Note: The vision system must be Offline.
2. Manually adjust the focus ring of the lens attached to the vision system so that the details of the features to be inspected are clear and highly contrasted, and the Focus Metric score is acceptable.
3. Once you are satisfied with the quality of your image and its score, press the Live Video button again.
4. The last image acquired after pressing the Live Video button will then be displayed.

In-Sight 7000 Series Vision Systems with Autofocus M12 Lens

Note: For In-Sight 70xx - 74xx series vision systems, the Focus Controls are only available for vision systems running In-Sight Explorer 4.7.3 or later, and In-Sight 4.7.3 firmware or later.

1. Press the Live Video button. Alternately, you can press the button in the EasyBuilder Toolbar.

   Note: The vision system must be Offline.

2. Press the Autofocus button or manually adjust the Focus Position slider so that the details of the features to be inspected are clear and highly contrasted, and the Focus Metric score is acceptable.

   Note: When the Autofocus button is pressed, the Focus Position slider and the Save Focus button will be disabled.
3. After pressing Autofocus button the focus position value will be updated, and a new image will be displayed.
4. Once you are satisfied with the quality of your image and its score, press the Save Focus button. The current focus position will be saved as the default focus position, and the lens will be moved automatically to that position the next time when the vision system powers up.

Adjusting Brightness

1. Press the Live Video button. Alternately, you can press the button in the EasyBuilder Toolbar.
2. From the EasyBuilder Toolbar, press the Brightness Feedback on. Areas of the image that are too dark are highlighted in blue, while areas of the image highlighted in red are too light.
3. You can adjust the brightness of the image through one of the following methods:
   • Manually adjust the aperture of the lens attached to the vision system until both the red and blue areas of the image are minimized.
   • From the Edit Acquisition Settings group box, increment the Exposure control until both the red and blue areas of the image are minimized.
   • From the Edit Acquisition Settings group box, activate the vision system's automatic exposure control by selecting either Continuous or Single-shot from the Auto-Exposure drop-down menu. Continuous activates the vision system to automatically adjust the exposure, depending up on light conditions, for every image acquisition. Single-shot adjusts the vision system's exposure based on the first image acquisition; the exposure settings will remain for each subsequent image acquisition.
4. Once you are satisfied with the quality of your image, press the Brightness Feedback icon again to turn off the display.

The Load Images from PC button launches the Record/Playback Options dialog, which is used to configure record and playback settings for individual vision systems and emulators. After configuring the dialog settings, you can record acquired images to the Record Folder and play back acquired images stored in the Playback Folder, located on the PC.

Playback Tab

After the Playback tab settings have been configured, when the Play button (in the PC filmstrip) is pressed, images stored in the specified Playback Folder on the PC are sent to the vision system and the job runs against the image being played back. By default, the Playback Folder references the EasyBuilder Sample Jobs folder.

Note: The EasyBuilder sample jobs provide a powerful demonstration of the usefulness of the Record/Playback options. The Record/Playback options enable a series of previously acquired images to be cycled through, providing instantaneous feedback of tool results, allowing for quick configuration of thresholds and limits. For more information, see EasyBuilder Sample Jobs and Sample Images.

Record Tab

After the Record tab settings have been configured, when the Record button (in the EasyBuilder toolbar) is pressed and images are acquired, the pass and fail images are recorded and saved to the specified Record Folder on the PC. You can save the images from an Online or Offline vision system to any folder that has “write” privileges. Up to 10,000 images can be saved to the PC.