Are
you the only person who can make changes to your inspection system?
If so, either you like those 3 a.m. phone calls when it starts
rejecting everything, or you’ve implemented the world’s most
robust machine vision system. Congratulations.
Most
of us want to let other people log on and make changes. Trouble is,
when you arrive on site and want to diagnose a vision system problem
there’s often no way of knowing who did what and when.
That’s
why a simple set of utility tools should always be part of every
system. I suggest they do the following:
- Require a sign-in to access the vision software. Consider multiple levels of access, so an operator can load a new part file but only an engineer can alter exposure time.
- Write that sign-in data to a .txt file, along with the date and time.
- Log every time a change to the part file is saved, and ideally, log that change. So if a size limit is moved from 25 to 26mm you’ll know.
- Do the same with camera and I/O parameters. Write down every change to the log.
You
might like to go further and gather stats on system availability and
run time. This would let you know if the system was being starved of
parts as well as helping judge when maintenance might be needed. For
example, you might log how many hours the lights have been on.
Yes
this is all extra coding, and your ability to do it will be related
to the platform you’re using: a vision sensor will not have the
programming flexibility of a PC-based system. But down the road, it’s
going to save you time. In fact your biggest challenge will be
finding Jane Doe to ask why she bumped a threshold up by two points.
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