Good morning everyone. I'm Tom Trinh, Senior Application Engineer for Valin Corporation. Today I will illustrate how to set up the measurement sensors.
This is a laser measurement sensor, the BD series from Autonics.
So what do you have in front of you here is the head itself that is connected to the amplifier, which is this cable here. And I have a little communication units here attached to the amplifier and I'm communicated to it using the RS485. These two wires for RS485 basically connected to my RS485 to USB adapter that connected to my laptop. You can also connect to this via RS232 as well. So that's the setup I have here. And what you also see here is the DVD disc that I'm using just to test. So you can see the measurement here. OK, let's talk a little bit about the spec itself. All right, so the sensor head comes with three different types. For example, here you see BD-030. That means the reference distance is 30 mm. That means from the tip of the sensor head all right to the object is 30 mm plus 20 to 40 mm, OK or BD-065 which reference distance is 65 mm or BD-100 which is 100 mm with the range here, OK. And the amplifier itself is the BD-A1, that's what this amplifier is. And then you have a communication unit that I showed you earlier in the under the camera. And if you look at the resolution, right. So for the BD-100, the resolution is micrometer, OK, BD-065 is 2 micrometer and BD-030 is 1 micrometer, OK. So that's the resolution that you can get out of these sensor heads. There's also a BD-100R. R means for reflective surface units and that's what I have in this illustration. OK, with that, let's go back to the setup here. So what you see here is the software, the AT measurement. By the way, it's free. You can download it from the website. From our website we can get it to you and that basically how you set it up. You can actually of course set it up through the button here as well. The software makes it a little bit easier for setup. OK, so with that, let me go over what we see so far. So what you see here is the actual display that you see on the amplifier as well. So I have a raw value -8.47. OK, and here's the set value that I set up. I just want to show the high, but let me kind of go through it real quick. So if you click on well, first and foremost, when you open the launch the software, you click. Let me go up right here so you can see. So this is how it looks like when you first launch it. You want to click connect and it's going to ask you the com port of your RS485 to USB, what comport that is. And you can find that out in the device manager of your windows of your laptop. So make sure that match what you have and then leave everything here. The same one for the baud rate 115200, parity none, one stop bit unit address 1 and then click scan and click OK, voila. So now it scan sees the units and that's how it come up. All right, so that's the first step you need to do. Then the next thing is you want to do is go into the parameter. Right. In this parameter you can set up these. But more importantly if you want your analog output, whatever that is right with support 4- 20 ma, 0-5 Volt, 1-5 Volt -5 to 5 Volt, OK, you select that. So that would be your analog output that you want to. OK here this you see that I have the set value me go back here quick. You see the set value I set is high. OK, you can change that to low raw value analog or bank, which is these are the banks that you selected. So you can have different banks for your measurement. Let's say today you you have a setup with the different set point and so forth. So you select the bank and to select that, once you set up, you can select, you can use the digital inputs to select the bank and so forth. OK. But for now, yeah, let's say I'll leave it at high. OK, So that's my anything. If it passed my high value, high threshold, it will turn on the output high. OK, so there are actually 3 outputs. Let me go back here. There's a high output, there's a within the range of the measurement and there's a low output. So you got three different outputs here. Right now it's within the range. That's why the goal means within the range. OK, so how do you set up the range?
Let's go back to the parameter right over here. You see the high output threshold is three, and the low threshold value is -10. OK, Now if I go back here, right? Because the present values right now is -8. So that's and my lowest threshold is -10 So that's why this is within the range. And therefore out the LED of go turn on because it's within the range.
OK now if I go back here alright and let's say I want to zero out my current set up right now so whatever I have right now is 0 so I can click this right here 0 compensation I click that it's going to 0 out and if you go back to real time data I got zero. It's beautiful OK. I can go back here right I can just leave this for now right 3 and -10. Now if I go back here and if I.Try to get the camera back on. OK, so you see right now I have one DVD, right? I'm going to put the second DVD on it and you will see this value would change.OK, so it's 1.7, right? I'm going to put another one that's 4.146 millimeter, right. So this is you can see the reading get down to micrometer and the output high turns on. Why? Because it's more than three.OK, So that's how you set it up for high output to be turned on. OK. If I remove them OK, it goes back OK. The nice thing about this also, you can log what we're doing right here. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to start logging, OK? I'm going to go back here. No, I don't want to do. I want to review the log yet. So let me go back here, get back to this guy, turn this on. OK, so now I'm going to put another second DVD on here, alright, again, it's within a range. I'm going to do it one more time. Another DVD. Now I got 4.4. OK, so that's how you set up. You can log as well.
If I want to view the log, I can do that. And this is logging right now. This is actually the one, 148 right no. So if I double click on it, the nice thing about it it's log it as a common separated delimiter so you can actually open it and see it. You know what, I think it's still logging. So I need to stop it. No I didn't. Now I’m logging, you see how I stopped it already? So let's start over again. Let me remove all this out, OK, and the reading, you see it changing a little bit because I don't have a very nice fixture you know the base here, but I'm going to go ahead and 0 out. So we got all this right now I'm going to 0 it out. OK, now I'm going to do this. I'm going to go back to here , actual real time data. Now I'm going to start logging at this point. OK, now it's logging, right? And it shows me the start time and the elapsed time. Now, right now that's only one DVD. I'm going to put another one, the second one on here. OK, so that's 1.7 something, right? I'm going to put another one. OK, so the high output comes on again. All right, so I'm going to stop logging now. I can view the log by clicking this. I'm going to go here and you see the latest 1 is this one right here. OK, I'm going to open it up.
Voila. OK, so these are the values that we see. So if you want to log and do the measurement and testing, you can certainly do that. OK, so I just want to show you that you can view the log, you can log it and set it up. The next thing is I want to show you that as far as a setup, you can also view the graph. Look at that right now. If I put my hand in, let me go back here, Right? Where is it? Here we go. OK, so it's showing. You know how it looks like. As far as the response, I'm going to remove one at a time. Let me put this on this side, OK? The graphics itself, it will automatically try to change that Y axis for you, OK? I'm going to remove another one, OK? So you can actually see the graphics, how it's measuring and so forth. I'm going to put another one back in. OK, this one over here. OK, I'm going to put another one back in, which is the third one, OK. So you can see how the measurement looks like when you set this up. This is a very nice piece of software. It's free from Autonics and as you can see, the resolution of the sensor head can get down to 1 micrometer resolution. Oh, I want to show you this regarding the analog output. These are different analog output signals that you can have 4 to 20 milliamps, zero to 5 Volt, 1 to 5 Volt and -5 to 5 Volt.
OK, so that's how you set up the Autonics BD series laser measurement sensor using the AT measurement software utility that is free of charge from Autonics.
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