Camera calibration

Focus is the whole of camera calibration, and it is mechanical: you turn each lens by hand against a printed chart until the image is sharp. A soft image costs you detection accuracy on every piece that camera sees.

Focus calibration

What you need

• A printed Siemens Star focus chart, roughly 8 x 8 cm. Any high-contrast radial spoke pattern works.

This preview isn't sized to print, it's just scaled to fit the column. Click it to open a print-ready page, sized exactly 8 x 8 cm with crop marks, and print that at 100% scale, not "fit to page", or it won't come out to size.

Steps

Do this for every camera on the machine, one at a time.

1. Lay the Siemens Star flat where that camera looks at parts. On a channel camera that is the rotor, the part the pieces ride on, at the point where the camera sees them. On a machine with a classification chamber it is the chamber tray, centred where parts sit.
2. Open the SorterOS UI, then Settings, then pick that camera. The live feed shows the star pattern.
3. Loosen the lens lock ring and turn the lens until the centre spokes resolve sharply, the point where the individual black and white wedges stay separate all the way in to the middle.
4. Tighten the lock ring. Take the chart out.

The centre of the star is the most demanding part of the image. If the spokes merge into grey mush in the middle, focus is not tight enough yet.

Run this again when

• You swap a camera or a lens.
• You move a camera lamp to a different dovetail.
• Detection starts missing pieces a camera used to see.

The finished result

Every camera on the machine sharp, with the centre of the star resolving cleanly in each live view.

Next

Chute calibration, then before your first sort run.