4 posts tagged with "openpnp"

The bottom camera is arguably the most important vision system on your desktop pick-and-place. It's what verifies that the component is correctly oriented on the nozzle before placement. Get the exposure wrong, and you're either blind to misaligned parts or drowning in false detections.

Most OpenPnP guides tell you to "adjust exposure until it looks right." That's not helpful. Here's what's actually happening and how to calibrate it properly.

Photon feeders use UUIDs (Universally Unique Identifiers) to communicate with OpenPnP. This is generally reliable, but it creates a specific class of problems when feeders share IDs, get reassigned, or conflict with each other. If you've ever seen OpenPnP detect the wrong feeder or fail to recognize a feeder that's physically connected, UUID conflicts are the likely culprit.

Here's what's happening under the hood and how to fix it.

Your solenoid valve won't open. The nozzle has no vacuum. You can't pick up components. Before you spend an hour debugging, check this: the GPIO pin mapping in OpenPnP doesn't match your actual wiring.

That's the answer 80% of the time. Here's the 60-second diagnostic and the full troubleshooting flow.

Fiducial detection is the backbone of accurate placement. When OpenPnP can't find your board's fiducials, the entire assembly process stops. Before you blame the software, work through these five fixes in order—they resolve the vast majority of detection failures.