Step 1: Imaging

Imaging decides what the camera actually sees. Every later step is built on this image, so it is the one step worth over-investing in.

In short

• Press Smart imaging, pick the best-looking candidate, then fine-tune by hand only if you need to
• Aim for a sharp, evenly lit image where you can see the defect with your own eyes
• Keep exposure short on a moving line, and make up light with LED brightness before gain
• Settle the image before you train anything, because changing it later means retraining

Start with the automatic buttons

Button	What it does
Smart imaging	Sets exposure, lighting and focus together
Autofocus only	Runs the focus routine and leaves your exposure and lighting alone

When you press either one, the camera asks what to optimise for: Whole frame, or Draw a region on the live view. Draw a region around the feature you are inspecting when the rest of the scene is much brighter or darker than it, or when the background sits at a different depth.

Smart imaging does not quietly change your settings. It captures a set of candidates at different exposures, with the LEDs on and off, and asks you to Choose the best-looking image. One is marked Recommended. Pick the one where your defect is clearest, then Apply these settings.

Judge the candidates on the defect, not on how nice the picture looks

The recommended candidate is usually the best-balanced image overall. That is not always the one where a faint scratch or a low-contrast print is most visible. Look at the feature you actually care about.

Fine-tune by hand

Setting	What it controls	Watch out for
Exposure (ms)	How long the sensor collects light	Longer is brighter, but a moving part blurs
LED brightness (%)	Power of the built-in ring light	0 turns it off completely
Focus	Lens position, driven by the autofocus motor	Nudge until edges are crisp at full zoom
Image orientation	Rotates the image to match the mounting	Set it before drawing any region
Lighting mode	How the built-in LEDs behave: Off, Strobe or Always on	See below

Lighting mode

Mode	What it does	Use it when
Strobe	Flashes the LEDs only at the moment of capture	Most lines. It runs cooler and extends LED life
Always on	Keeps the LEDs lit all the time	Flicker would distract operators working nearby
Off	Keeps the ring dark and ignores LED brightness	You light the part with your own external lights, or the built-in LEDs cause glare

Off is not the same as brightness 0

Both leave the ring dark, but Off keeps your brightness value for when you switch back. Use Off to try the part under external light, then return to Strobe without re-entering the setting.

No zoom on OV Spark

OV Spark does not have the Zoom control; it is an OV Spark Pro feature. To get more detail on a small part, move the camera closer or use a longer lens.

Under Advanced settings:

Setting	Use it when
Gain (dB)	You cannot add light and cannot lengthen exposure. It brightens the image but adds noise
LED ring mode	You need a different lighting pattern from the default
White balance mode and temperature	Colour matters, which it does for Color Match

Fix white balance before using Color Match

Automatic white balance re-adapts whenever the colour in the frame changes, which is exactly what Color Match is trying to measure. If the recipe has a Color Match tool, set a fixed white balance here first.

What a good image looks like

• Sharp: the feature has crisp edges at full zoom
• Evenly lit: no blown-out highlights and no black shadows where the feature is
• Consistent: ten captures in a row look the same
• Well filled: the part takes up most of the frame, so the AI has pixels to work with

The honest test

If you cannot see the defect in the camera image yourself, the AI will not learn it either. Fix that with lighting and position now. No amount of training data rescues an image where the defect is invisible.

Moving parts

OV Spark has a global shutter, so a moving part is not skewed. It can still blur, because the part keeps moving while the sensor collects light.

The rule: the part should move less than about one pixel during the exposure. If edges look soft on a moving line, shorten the exposure and make up the lost light with LED brightness first and Gain second.

Overview's optics calculators include Max Part Speed, Field of View, Mounting Distance and Min Defect Size. Choose your camera under Camera Model.

Why this step comes first

Changing the image later means retraining

Tools learn from the images they were trained on. Change focus, exposure, lighting, orientation or the mounting after training, and what the camera sees no longer matches what it learned. Recapture your examples and retrain.

This is why Imaging is Step 1, not a finishing touch.

Step 5 of 13

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Next →Step 2: Triggering

Choose a method that triggers the camera capture.