HALCON 10 Image Acquisition Interface for Leuze LPS 36 Sensors

This page provides the documentation of the HALCON image acquisition interface for Leuze LPS 36 light-section sensors. Registered customers can download the latest revision of this interface from the MVTec WWW server.

Revision: 4.1

System Requirements

• Intel compatible PC with Windows XP SP2/Vista SP1, Windows XP x64/Vista x64, or Linux x86/x86_64 with kernel 2.4 (or higher).
• Network interface card.
• Windows: HALCON image acquisition interface hAcqLPS36.dll or hAcqLPS36xl.dll, respectively. If you have properly installed the interface, all these DLLs should reside in bin\%HALCONARCH% within the HALCON base directory %HALCONROOT% you have chosen during the installation of HALCON.
  Linux: HALCON image acquisition interface hAcqLPS36.so or hAcqLPS36xl.so, respectively. If you have properly installed the interface, the shared objects should reside in lib\$HALCONARCH within the HALCON base directory $HALCONROOT you have chosen during the installation of HALCON.

Features

• Grabbing of equidistant images using grab_image. These images are computed from the raw data and take the encoder values into account if available. The raw data is converted to a image with a width of 600 pixels. The height of the image corresponds to the number of scan lines when there is no encoder data or is variable depending on the minimum and maximum values of the encoder data. If the resulting height would exceed the maximum image height the encoder data is scaled automatically. The gray value of a pixel corresponds to the distance (z-axis). The image is scaled in a way that one pixel in the width or one grayvalue correspond to 1mm in the real world. The height is currently not scaled.
• Access to x and z distance data via image tuples using grab_data. grab_data also enables direct access to encoder values when an external encoder is available.
• Software control of important sensor parameters.

Limitations

• No scaling of height values.
• No triggering.
• No support for cascading sensors.
• No support of grab_image_async and grab_data_async.

Description

Parameters for open_framegrabber():

	Name		'LPS36'		The name of the HALCON image acquisition interface.
	HorizontalResolution		376, 1		Fixed horizontal resolution. 1 means full resolution. Default: 1.
	VerticalResolution		1...32767 (or higher with HALCON XL)		Number of scan lines which are combined to an image. One line takes approximately 10ms to be acquired. Default: 1.
	ImageWidth		0		The setting of the current horizontal resolution is used. Default: 0.
	ImageHeight		0		The setting of the current vertical resolution is used. Default: 0.
	StartRow		---		Ignored.
	StartColumn		---		Ignored.
	Field		---		Ignored.
	BitsPerChannel		16		The LPS 36 sensor only supports 16 bits/pixel. Default: 16.
	ColorSpace		'raw','gray'		The LPS 36 sensor always acquires raw images. These images contain raw x, z and possibly y (encoder) data and need post-processing. The x and z data unit is 1/10mm. Default: 'raw'.
	Generic		['device_port=num',  'pc_port=num'],  -1		With the Generic parameter some important values can be set before the camera is initialized. device_port: Network port which is used by the device. This must be the same as set on the sensor via the menu. Default: 9008. pc_port: Network port which is used by the PC. This must be the same as set on the sensor via the menu. Default: 5634.
	ExternalTrigger		---		Ignored.
	CameraType		---		Ignored.
	Device		ip_address,host_name,'default'		IP address or network name of the camera. Default: '192.168.60.3'.
	Port		---		Ignored.
	LineIn		---		Ignored.

Parameters for set_framegrabber_param():

Note that most of the following parameters (and also the valid parameter values) depend on the capabilities of the used camera. Furthermore, the default values may depend on the current camera settings.

	'grab_timeout'		milliseconds,-1		Specify the desired timeout (milliseconds passed as an integer) for aborting a pending grab. The value -1 sets the timeout to 65535. Note that one line takes about 10ms to be acquired, so for e.g. 100 lines the minimum usable timeout value is about 1000. Default: 5000.
	'inspection_task'		0 ... 15		Use the settings of the specified inspection task. You need to use the original LPSsoft tool from Leuze to specify and save such tasks.
	'laser_gate'		'off','on'		Deactivates or activates the laser gate.

Parameters for get_framegrabber_param():

Additional parameters supported by get_framegrabber_param only. Note that all parameters supported by set_framegrabber_param except the ones with prefix 'do_' can also be accessed by get_framegrabber_param. Furthermore, corresponding to the parameters supported by set_framegrabber_param, there may exist additional read-only parameters with the following postfixes:

• '_description': These parameters provide the tooltip of the corresponding parameter as a string.
• '_range': These parameters provide the minimum, maximum, stepwidth, and default values for the corresponding integer or float parameter as a tuple with 4 elements, e.g., get_framegrabber_param(..,'exposure_range',..) will return the output tuple [min,max,step,default]. Optionally, this tuple can also contain additional valid string values like 'auto' or 'manual'.
• '_values': These parameters provide the valid value list for the corresponding parameter as a tuple, e.g., get_framegrabber_param(..,'volatile_values',..) will return the output tuple ['enable','disable'].

	'device_port'		port (long)		The port which is used by the sensor/device.
	'num_buffers'		num (long)		The number of buffers currently used for grabbing images.
	'pc_port'		port (long)		The port which is used by the PC to communicate with the device.
	'revision'		revision (string)		The revision number of the HALCON interface.

Release Notes

• Revision 4.1 (Mar 21, 2012):
  • Improved usage in highly loaded networks: While waiting for a specific acknowledge make sure to wait up to 1s and ignore all other incoming packets.
  • Changed default IP address to match factory default of sensor.
  • Corrected swapped comments for x and z data in lps36_simple example.
Revision 4.0 (Aug 24, 2010):
• First official release.
• HALCON 10 version of the interface (included in HALCON 10 DVD).