Feeder Setup for tube feeder with vision

[Christoph Gabriel]

Dear all,
I am new to Openpnp and am having difficulty finding a suitable setup for my homemade tube feeder. Ideally, I would like a setup that can calculate the correct picking point for my part using vision, and then run an actuator command to control the vibratory motor after picking.
Either I have overlooked the correct feeder setup, or I don't understand how to set it up properly.
Can anyone offer some advice? Any help would be much appreciated.

I received my Pandaplacer last week and I am very happy with the machine so far. I am open to exchanging experiences!

Thanks in advance!
Best regards from Munich, Germany,
Christoph

[Toby Dickenson]

Hi Christoph,

It depends what you mean by "using vision".

ReferenceAutoFeeder will give you the actuator integration. I hope
your vibratory tube feeder delivers parts to a repeatable location; at
least repeatable enough for picking, then the precise alignment can be
determined by bottom camera. If so, then your setup process can use
the top camera to pick out the center point of the part, and use the
"capture the camera location" button (blue square) to set the pick
location.

But maybe your vibratory tube feeder is less repeatable and you are
hoping to use the top camera to find the parts on each pick. I dont
think there is a standard feature to do that.

Toby

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[Christoph Gabriel]

Hi Toby,
Thanks for your support! As you wrote, I would like to use the top camera to determine the exact picking position due to the lack of perfectly repeatable alignment. The component that needs to be picked is not designed to be placed by a PNP machine. It is a mechanical connector. I need to detect the circle in the middle in order to calculate the picking point using an XY offset. Do you have any ideas for a workaround? I was thinking about using a loose part feeder, but I can't get it to work.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!
Christoph

[Toby Dickenson]

Can you make a top vision pipeline to detect the center circle (or
some other part feature) as if it was a fiducial?

If so, I am confident this could be made to work using openpnp's
wonderful scripting feature. You will need a fairly recent version to
have the Feeder.BeforeFeed scripting event. This script gets run
immediately prior to *every* feeder feeding. ReferenceAutoFeeder is
still a good option, assuming its actuator integration is driving your
vibrator as expected. Your script needs to:

1. Check that the machine is homed, using config.get().getMachine().isHomed()

2. Check the feeder name, because scripts are global and you dont want
this to affect all feeders.,

3. Move the camera to your search area.

4. Run your pipeline. This is something like:
part = config.getPart("YOUR PART ID");
camera = machine.getDefaultHead().getDefaultCamera();
pipeline = machine.getFiducialLocator().getFiducialPipeline(camera,part,location);
pipeline.process();
results = pipeline.getExpectedResult("results");
model = results.getModel();

5. Use the results from the vision pipeline to calculate your new pick
location, and adjust the feeder location attribute. The feeder won't
mind having its pick location changed only moments before the pick
actually occurs.
feeder.setLocation(.....). You might need some logic to set x and y
without changing z

Toby

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