The devil lurks within

They say the devil is in the details, and that’s as true in machine vision as in life. Take camera mounts for example; those seemingly innocuous pieces of metal providing the transition from the M2 threads in the camera body to the ¼”-20 or M6 thread that hold camera to mounting bracket.

The first challenge is in remembering to order one along with your camera. I don’t know of a single manufacturer who bundles a mount in with the camera, so that’s an additional $30 you need to budget for. (The cynic in me suspects that mounts are a high margin item for the vendors.)

Challenge number two is in securing the camera to bracket or frame. (I’d advise against mounting a camera on a machine frame, but that’s a subject for another posting.)
The problem is that there’s only a single screw thread, so how do you stop the camera rotating? Perhaps someone could devise a kinematic mounting system for cameras, or on a more straightforward level, would it be possible to have 2 threads at a standard spacing (maybe 25mm?)

And speaking of standards, every camera has a different pattern of threaded holes, meaning that a different mount is needed. As a result, I have drawers full of mounts for cameras long since obsolete. But the bigger problem is that if I change a camera on a machine, all the mounting points are going to change. In other words, I swap my AVT Marlin for something from Point Grey, (to pick two vendors at random,) and suddenly the working distance from lens to target has changed.

So is there a way to standardize the offset between imaging sensor and the mounting hole? By this I mean, could every camera/mounting plate combo have the same sensor to M6 screw hole distance?

I admit that I haven’t thought through the details, but standardization is really a good thing. If we could get some standardization in camera mounting, everyone’s life would be just a little less frustrating.