Structured light camera presets

The Pickit structured light cameras have a number of presets, with pre-configured camera settings optimized for different scene types. Presets can trigger one or more image captures. When multiple captures are used, each capture uses different camera settings (e.g. optimized for bright or dark regions) and are combined to produce higher quality results.

For example, the following image was taken with a single-capture preset optimized for light reflective parts. It can be seen that the bright regions of the plates are detected but the dark ones are not.

2D and Points views of a calibration plate and markers captured with the light reflective parts preset: bright regions of the plates are captured, dark regions are missing

On the other hand, the following image was taken with another single-capture preset optimized for dark, non-reflective parts. In contrast to the previous image, it can be seen that the dark regions of the plates are detected but the bright ones are not.

2D and Points views of the same plates captured with the dark non-reflective parts preset: dark regions are captured, bright marker regions are missing

Finally, the following image was taken with a multi-capture preset optimized for mixed-color parts. It can be seen how both the bright and dark regions are detected, resulting in a higher-quality result, but at the cost of a higher acquisition time.

2D and Points views of the same plates captured with the multi-capture mixed-color parts preset: both bright and dark regions are captured

The custom preset

These cameras are highly configurable, so if finer control is needed, advanced HD camera settings can be enabled in the advanced settings, which adds a new Custom entry to the presets that can be manually configured. However, most users will find that the pre-configured presets are sufficient for their needs.

The Custom preset is a special preset that allows you to manually configure settings like:

  • The number of captures.

  • The configuration of each capture: Aperture, exposure time, gain, projector brightness.

  • The vision engine to use in all captures, which affects the pattern projection and the processing to generate the point cloud.

  • Enabling and configuring different filters for improving the quality of the results.

When the Custom preset is selected, it will display the settings for the last pre-configured preset that was used.