Camera Overview

Camera Overview¶

If your laser has a LightBurn-compatible camera installed, you can use it to position designs on your material and to trace artwork or objects placed in your laser. Before you can use the camera features, you'll need to Calibrate and Align your camera.

Camera Changes in LightBurn 2.2¶

• The Cameras Window is now the Cameras / Overlays Window.
• New Camera Calibration features, including an improved capture experience when using Auto-Capture.

Skip to the Cameras / Overlays Window

Getting Started¶

Before you can use a camera in LightBurn, it has to be calibrated and aligned. If you move your camera, you'll need to redo the camera alignment, but the camera calibration doesn't need to be redone.

The video above uses an older version of LightBurn and may not match perfectly with what you see on your screen.

Importing an Existing Setup¶

If you've already set up your camera on a different computer or using an older version of LightBurn and exported a camera file, you can import your existing calibration and alignment into LightBurn 2.1.

If you're happy with your existing calibration and alignment, great! If not, you may want to try redoing either (or both!) with our improved processes.

New Camera Setup¶

If you haven't already configured a camera, or you just want to start from scratch, you'll need to do the following:

1. Select and install a camera, if you haven't already done so.
2. Add Your camera to LightBurn.
3. Calibrate your camera lens to correct for the camera's distortion. We have presets for the LightBurn cameras , so if you've purchased your camera directly from us, you can use the appropriate preset.
4. Align your camera to your workspace. Unlike Lens Calibration, which is based only on the camera itself, Alignment depends on the camera's location in the machine, so you'll have to redo this if you move the camera.

Cameras / Overlays Window¶

You'll use the Cameras / Overlays Window to add cameras, work with camera overlays, and check camera status. For more details, see Cameras / Overlays Window. You also might want to jump to Camera Lens Calibration.

Camera Types¶

You can set up multiple cameras for your laser, and depending on your laser, you may want to. For larger lasers in particular, combining an Overhead Camera for an overview of the entire workspace with a Head Camera for a more accurate and detailed view of the area you're going to be working in can be very effective.

Overhead Camera¶

An Overhead Camera is one that's mounted to your laser's frame (often the lid) and doesn't move around while in use. Overhead cameras are intended to show an overview of the laser's entire work area, letting you preview your entire workspace at once. When you choose a camera to use as an Overhead Camera, it's important to choose something with a wide enough field of view to show your entire workspace, and high enough resolution to get a useful amount of detail.

On larger lasers, it can be difficult to get a wide enough field of view to cover the entire bed, so some users set up two Overhead Cameras, each one covering half the bed. If you do this, you'll calibrate and align each camera separately, and enable both in the Overlay.

You can also use an Overhead Camera to get an overview of the entire workspace and combine it with a Head Camera to get a close-up view and refine the overlay for the specific part of the bed you're working in.

Head Camera¶

A Head Camera (formerly referred to as a Head-Mounted Camera in LightBurn) is one that's mounted to the head of your laser and moves around with it. Head Cameras aren't as effective as Overhead Cameras for getting an overview of the entire work area, but they're great for getting a sharper, more detailed view of a specific part of your workspace. The difference is particularly significant towards the edges of the workspace, where an Overhead Camera's view will be more distorted, and with particularly large lasers, where an Overhead Camera may not have enough resolution to show much detail.

You can get an overlay of the entire workspace with a Head Camera by having LightBurn stitch together captures of the entire workspace, but this is slower and less effective than with an Overhead Camera.

LiDAR¶

LiDAR Ranging, or Depth Scanning, uses a sensor to create a height map of the surface of an object loaded into your laser. This is currently only supported on the ACCELaser HD1. See LiDAR for more information.