Working Principle of an Industrial Camera

The working principle of an industrial camera can be summarized in four core stages:

1. Light Acquisition

• Process: Light reflected from or emitted by the target passes through the industrial lens into the camera.

• Llave: The lens collects and focuses the light to form a sharp optical image on the internal sensor.

2. Photoelectric Conversion

• Process: This is the core step. The focused light strikes the image sensor.

• Llave: The sensor (typically a CCD or CMOS chip) contains millions of individual photosites. Each photosite (pixel) converts the received light intensity into a proportional weak analog electrical signal (voltage).

3. Signal Processing & Digitization

• Process: The analog signals from the sensor are weak and continuous, requiring processing.

• Key Steps:

  • Amplification: Internal circuits amplify the signal.

  • Digitization: An Analog-to-Digital Converter converts each pixel’s analog voltage into a digital value. This value represents brightness (for monochrome cameras) or color components (for color cameras).

• Result: The optical image is now a digital matrix composed of thousands of digital brightness values.

4. Image Output

• Process: The digital image data is formatted by the camera’s internal processor and transmitted via a data interface.

• Llave: The data is sent to a host computer via a standard interface for storage, display, or analysis by image processing software.

Summary: The principle of an industrial camera is a precise chain of optical, electronic, and digital conversion. It captures the “light” of the real world using high-precision lenses and sensors, converting it into “numbers” that computers can understand and process, thereby providing the most fundamental and critical visual data for machine vision systems.