Microscan Visionscape FrontRunner User manual

Visionscape®FrontRunner™
User’s Manual
83-100042-02 Rev A
v4.1.3, April 2012

Copyright ©2012
Microscan Systems, Inc.
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Contents
PREFACE Welcome! ix
Purpose of This Manual ix
Manual Conventions ix
CHAPTER 1 Visionscape®Overview 1-1
Introduction 1-1
Visionscape®Hardware 1-2
VS-1 Smart Camera Overview 1-4
Supported PCs 1-9
VS-1 Smart Camera Models 1-10
Effective Frame Per Second and Pipeline Operation Formulas 1-
10
Triggering Rules for Single Channel Devices 1-12
Setup and Runtime 1-12
Visionscape®V4.1 Firmware 1-13
IntelliFind™ on the VS-1 Smart Camera 1-13
Messages 1-14
Visionscape®Software Structure and Concepts 1-15
Steps and Trees 1-15
Job Step 1-16
Vision System Step 1-16
Inspection 1-17
Snapshot and Acquire 1-18

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Jobs 1-20
Jobs and Storage in Non-Volatile Memory 1-20
Combining Jobs for Operation as a Multi-Inspection Job on the VS-1
Smart Camera 1-21
CHAPTER 2 FrontRunner™ 2-1
Overview 2-1
Visionscape®V4.1 Firmware 2-2
Basic Concepts 2-2
Device Toolbar and Device Buttons 2-2
Adding a Software System 2-4
Adding and Controlling a Smart Camera 2-5
Important Visionscape®Steps 2-6
The Acquire Step 2-6
The Snapshot Step 2-7
The Vision System Step 2-8
Focus and Lighting 2-8
Exposure Time 2-9
Steps and Tools 2-9
Adding Steps and Tools 2-9
Training and Untraining Tools 2-10
Trying Out a Job 2-10
Downloading a Job 2-11
Saving a Job 2-11
Saving an Image 2-11
Starting a Job 2-12
Advanced Concepts 2-13
Multiple Views 2-13
Software Systems 2-19
Displaying I/O Transitions 2-20
Simulating Triggers 2-21
Examining I/O Transitions (Digital Soft Scope) 2-23
Camera Calibration 2-25
The Part Queue 2-25
Windows You’ll See In FrontRunner™ 2-25
The Main FrontRunner™ Window 2-25
The Setup Window 2-27
Setup Window Toolbar Buttons 2-29

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The Context Menu 2-34
The Editor Window 2-36
Editor Window Toolbar Buttons 2-37
The Reports Window 2-39
The I/O Display Window 2-42
The Network Overview Window 2-43
Changing a Camera’s Name 2-45
Changing a Camera’s IP Settings 2-46
Changing a Camera’s Password 2-47
Menus You’ll See in FrontRunner™ 2-48
File Menu 2-48
View Menu 2-50
Help Menu 2-53
Miscellaneous 2-54
Displaying Important Information About a Camera 2-54
Configuring I/O Buttons 2-54
What I/O Buttons Look Like 2-57
Saving I/O Buttons 2-57
Enabling ROI Masking 2-58
CHAPTER 3 Camera Calibration 3-1
Using Robust Calibration 3-1
Using Quick Calibration 3-8
Advanced Options 3-12
Using Previously Saved Calibration Data 3-16
CHAPTER 4 The Part Queue 4-1
Setting Up and Starting the Part Queue 4-2
Storing Qualified Images 4-4
Viewing Images in the Part Queue 4-7

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Saving Images and Records 4-8
Saving Current Image from the Part Queue 4-8
Saving All Images from the Part Queue 4-9
Saving Current Image with Graphics from the Part Queue 4-10
Saving All Images with Graphics from the Part Queue 4-10
Saving the Current Record from the Part Queue 4-11
Saving All Records from the Part Queue 4-12
Selecting the Default Folder Location 4-13
APPENDIX A Creating a Good Image A-1
Determining Field Of View (FOV) A-1
Selecting a Lens A-2
Illuminating the Part A-4
Lighting Considerations A-5
Types of Lighting A-5
Fluorescent Versus Incandescent Lighting A-6
Lasers A-7
Strobe Lights A-7
Diffuse Versus Point-Source Lighting A-7
Placement of Light Sources A-9
Front Lighting A-9
Side Lighting (dark field) A-9
Back Lighting A-10
Polarized Light A-10
Advanced Lighting A-11
DOAL A-12
CDI A-13
SCDI A-14
Aperture A-15
Depth of Field A-16
Lighting Tips A-16
Index

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Preface
PREFACE Welcome!
Purpose of This Manual
• Chapter 1 is a generic overview of the Visionscape®product family.
• Chapter 2 describes the FrontRunner™ Graphical User Interface
environment.
• Chapter 3 provides a specific guide to camera calibration using the
facilities contained in FrontRunner™.
• Chapter 4 provides specific information about the Part Queue.
Manual Conventions
The following typographical conventions are used throughout this manual.
• Items emphasizing important information are bolded.
• Menu selections, menu items and entries in screen images are
indicated as: Run (triggered), Modify..., etc.

Preface
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1
Visionscape®
Overview
1
CHAPTER 1 Visionscape®Overview
This chapter covers the basic Visionscape®concepts in terms of the
hardware and vision application development.
Introduction
At its highest level, Visionscape is a set of software and hardware that
allows you to create and operate machine vision applications without
having to consider the details of data connection and information flows in
the software or how the underlying hardware is configured.
All Visionscape applications, commonly referred to as “Jobs,” have the
following components and characteristics:
• A Machine Vision Program — Commonly referred to as an “AVP” or
“Job”. A Job is a collection of Visionscape®steps.
• Visionscape Steps — Steps are completely encapsulated machine
vision operations and tools. Steps pass information to each other and
take care of all hardware and memory management. A Visionscape®
Job is a tree of steps. The order of the tree defines the order of
execution and flow of data.
• A Vision System Step is present at the top of each Job. The Vision
System Step represents the hardware on which the Job is to run -
either a Smart Camera, a Vision System comprised of GigE
Cameras, or a software system.

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• All Steps contain Datums, which represent the inputs to and outputs
from a Step or Tool.
Visionscape®Vision Systems
The hardware platform on which the Visionscape application is to run is
generically called a Vision System. Visionscape supports several types of
Vision Systems:
• The VS-1 Smart Camera — A networked Smart Camera for use in
machine vision and traceability applications. It has integrated lighting,
optics, imaging, processing, I/O, and communications.
• Visionscape GigE System — A Vision System comprised of one or
more Visionscape GigE cameras.
• Visionscape Software System — Visionscape can mimic a hardware
system by running a software emulation. The software system may
be used for application development using stored images. Typically, a
software key is required for full operation.

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Visionscape®FrontRunner™ Overview
FrontRunner is an application development and monitoring GUI.
FrontRunner™ gives you full access to Visionscape tools.
Using FrontRunner™, you can:
• Train, tryout, and download a Job to a Vision System (see Figure 1-1).
FIGURE 1–1. Train, Tryout, and Download
• Assemble Jobs and adjust parameters (see Figure 1-2).

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FIGURE 1–2. Assemble Jobs and Adjust Parameters

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• Monitor a Vision System (see Figure 1-3)
FIGURE 1–3. Monitor Vision System

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• Monitor results (see Figure 1-4)
FIGURE 1–4. Monitor Results
The Visionscape toolkit is comprehensive, and includes:
• Image preprocessing
• Image arithmetic, warping, binary and gray scale morphology, edge
enhancement, other filtering, etc
• Image analysis
• Flaw detection, blob analysis, edge detection and fitting, vector edge
detection, template find, etc
• Calibrated dimensional measurements
• Line intersection, point to point distance, point to line normal, etc.
• Automatic identification
• Data Matrix and barcode reading, OCR, etc

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• Custom processing options
• Custom measurements and custom scripted tools
Setup and Runtime
When working with Visionscape®applications, you access the
Visionscape®Vision hardware in one of two modes:
• In Setup mode, the setup objects control the hardware. You can train
and tryout tools and debug your vision application.
• In Runtime mode, you download your vision applications to the
runtime hardware objects for full speed operations. The runtime
objects control the hardware, and the setup objects cannot be used to
edit the Job. You can start and stop vision inspections at runtime, as
well as receive inspection results and runtime images.
Note: Setup and Runtime modes are mutually exclusive. That is, only one
mode can control a vision system.
Visionscape®4.1 Firmware
Note: If you open a Visionscape®V4.0 Job using Visionscape®V4.1, the
Job automatically becomes a V4.1 Job, even if no changes are made to
the Job.
You can monitor, but not program, a V4.0 Job on a VS-1 Smart Camera
with FrontRunner™. Also, you can upload a V4.0 Job and save it to your
PC, at which time it becomes a V4.1 Job.
The IntelliFind™ Tool
IntelliFind™ is a very capable and robust object locator tool that is
invariant to many changes in the images, such as contrast, intensity
variation, scale, translation, rotation, noise, and occlusion. IntelliFind™
allows a feature or object to be found, and it can significantly reduce the

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complexity of locating features in an image. It is well suited where an
object reference must be found before it is inspected or gauged.
When building a Job in FrontRunner™ (for more information, see Chapter
2), you can insert an IntelliFind™ tool by selecting it from the Insert Tool
dialog box (Image/PreProcessing tab). You can always insert and use
IntelliFind™ in a Job, even if a key cannot be found to unlock it. In this
case, IntelliFind™ runs in demonstration mode, with recurring messages
requesting that you insert the key. You can make changes to tryout the
Job, but you cannot save the Job to disk. When connected to a VS-1
Smart Camera IntelliFind™ model, no hardware dongle is required to
tryout the Job. Essentially, the VS-1 Smart Camera acts as a hardware
dongle, but only for that VS-1 Smart Camera currently selected in
FrontRunner™ (focused device).
Note:You cannot upgrade a non-IntelliFind™ VS-1 Smart Camera in the
field.
Visionscape®Software Structure and Concepts
Steps and Trees
A Step represents a piece of vision functionality in Visionscape®.
Applications are a collection of steps. To provide order to this collection,
the steps are arranged in a Tree. The Tree represents not only the
containment of a set of steps, but also represents a data connection
between these steps. In other words, a step can receive a set of data
inputs, act on this data, and produce a set of data outputs. The tree
represents the connection of particular data outputs to data inputs.
The most common piece of data to be passed from one step to another is
a buffer. A buffer is a piece of memory that contains image data.
In Figure 1-5, a Snapshot generates a buffer that is passed to the Sobel
Filter. The Sobel Filter then executes a Sobel algorithm on the buffer and
generates a new buffer, which is passed to the Edge Tool. The Edge Tool
finds an edge on that buffer and reports a result. A step that generates

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output can have other steps or tools inserted into it. The inserted tools
then connect their inputs to the outputs of the parent step.
FIGURE 1–5. Sample Job Tree
Many tools also have a region of interest (ROI) that defines an area on
the input buffer for that tool. In the case of the Sobel Filter, the ROI
defines the area where the Sobel Filter executes its algorithm. Its output
buffer (or input buffer to the Edge Tool), is the size of its ROI.
Many steps are not vision based steps like Sobel Filter or Edge Tool, but
actually represent other useful pieces of functionality like I/O, image
acquisition, or a thread-of-execution. Several steps are common to every
Job you create. These are Job, VisionSystem, Inspection, and
Snapshot/Acquire.
Job Step
The Job Step is the root of all steps in the Job Tree. When you create a
new application, you are creating a new Job that contains a Vision
System Step that represent the Visionscape®Vision System installed in
the system. A Vision System is an object that can use hardware to
execute vision. The hardware can be a GigE camera, a smart camera, or
software that is not connected to any specific hardware at all. The Job
Step contains all Vision System Steps in the tree and is used as the single
entry point of the tree.
The Job Step performs no special function and does not contain any
results. Essentially, the Job Step is a collection of Vision System Steps.
Each Vision System Step represents a single Visionscape®Vision
System, but the Job Step represents a set of Visionscape®Vision
Systems (see Figure 1-6).

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FIGURE 1–6. Job Tree
In Visionscape®V4.1, FrontRunner™ can open and save single Vision
System Step files. This opens or saves a specific Vision System Step tree
rather than all systems at once, allowing you to work with each system
exclusively.
Vision System Step
The Vision System Step is the step representation of a Vision System
itself. A Vision System is an object that can use hardware to execute
vision programs. The hardware can be a GigE Camera, a Smart Camera,
or software that is not connected to any specific hardware at all. The
Vision System Step can take control of a specific Vision System on the
AvpBackplane, and can be changed later to assume a different Vision
System. The Vision System Step has parameters that allow you to set the
camera type to be used by the system, set the parameters of the
bufferpool for this Vision System, and set the general purpose I/O
configuration. Essentially, the step provides the parameters to configure
the actual hardware of the Vision System.
The Vision System Step also contains all the Inspections that are used by
the Vision System, as shown in Figure 1-7.
FIGURE 1–7. Three Inspections
Inspection
The Inspection Step represents one thread of execution for your vision
application. The Inspection is the entry point for execution whether you
are setting up your application or executing your application. You can
create any number of Inspections in a Vision System, and each can be
Visionscape Vision System #1 (Vision System Step)
Job Container Step
Inspection Step

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started and stopped asynchronously. In a typical inspection, you use a
Snapshot/Acquire to acquire an image, execute vision tools on that
image, and then report results either through I/O or through the Inspection
Report.
Creating multiple inspections allows you to create inspections with tools
that execute either synchronously or asynchronously.
Note: The preceding statement is generally applicable to Visionscape®. In
the case of the VS-1 Smart Camera: while multiple inspections are still
supported, care should be taken to make sure that multiple Snapshot
steps do not attempt to use the single “camera” at the same time.
In Figure 1-8, the Job contains two Inspection steps renamed to Flaw
Inspection and Data Matrix Inspection for clarity.
FIGURE 1–8. Job With Multiple Inspection Steps
The Flaw Inspection contains two Snapshots. The first Snapshot (11)
contains a Flaw tool that might be used to detect scratches on a part. The
second Snapshot (12) in this inspection might be taken at a longer
exposure to detect some subtle defects in a specified region. Because
Snapshot 12 follows Snapshot 11 in the same inspection, it will not take
place until the Flaw tool runs. Snapshot 21 is in a separate inspection.
Both it and Snapshot 11 should be separately triggered in a manner that
will ensure that they do not both use the sensor at the same time.

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Snapshot and Acquire
The Snapshot and Acquire steps work together to provide image
acquisition capabilities for the Job. Acquire is the image creator;
Snapshot is the image receiver.
Acquire is a special step that knows how to capture images from the
camera or disk, utilizing triggers and strobes. You can program the
camera selection, trigger, and strobe in the Acquire step. When
executing, the Acquire sets up the Camera I/O Card or Smart Camera
digitizer according to your selection and captures images into a list, called
a frame list. When an image is set into the list, the Snapshot can then pull
the frame from the list and turn it into a buffer that is then passed along to
its contained steps.
The execution of the Acquire depends on your trigger selection. The letter
“P” at the left of the Acquire step in the Job Tree means the Acquire step
is a preprocessing step of the Snapshot. Though it is a child of the
Snapshot, it is executed before the Snapshot. When no triggers are
selected (see Figure 1–8, “Job With Multiple Inspection Steps,” on
page 1-11), the Flaw Inspection tree is executed in the following order:
Acquire
Snapshot
FlawTool1
Acquire
Snapshot
Flaw Tool2
Digital Outputs Step
This changes when you select a trigger. In order to maximize image
acquisition along with inspection execution, when a trigger is selected, the
images are pipelined to the running Inspection. The hardware acquires
images from the camera when the trigger is fired using the appropriate
acquisition definition and instruct the Acquire Step that an image frame
(or buffer) is available. The Acquire Step creates a Frame Datum from the
image and pushes it onto its frame list. The Snapshot, running within the
Inspection thread, will remove the images from the frame list when it
executes. In this way, a triggered acquisition pipelines the image to the
running inspection. This allows multiple images to be captured so the
vision on the system production line does not miss parts.