Vision Builder for Automated Inspection: Image randomly appears upside down

Question

Hi everyone,
I seem to be having a rather unusual problem here. I'm using an IDS UI-6280 camera to simply take a picture and log it to a file every minute. However, about 50% of the times when I start VBAI, the image appears upside down. The only solution I have found so far is to close VBAI and start it again. It usually takes a couple of tries before the image turn back up again, and then it's okay for the next couple of times I open VBAI. I have found no clues at all as to what could be causing this. Has anyone experienced something like this before?
Clarification:
- Once VBAI is running, the image does not flip randomly. If the first image is upside down, so are all the subsequent images. If the first image is upright, so are all the subsequent images. The flipping only seems to happen when I open VBAI. 
- The flipping only seems to happen when I use VBAI. Using the IDS software always gives an upright image.
- There is about a 50-50 distribution between upside down and upright images. However, there seems to be some pattern in when the flipping occurs. I just opened and closed VBAI 10 times, the upside down and upright state occured in an order like this (x=upside down, 0=upright): x0xxx00000
Any help or insights would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

1. Does the camera have an attribute for flipping it? If it does, the camera may not handle this attribute well when VBAI sets this attribute in conjunction with the other attributes as fast as VBAI can when it is initializing the camera. Most cameras respond when they are done and ready for the next attribute to be set, but some cameras respond before the attribute is done being set and can get in a messed up state if another attribute is set too quickly. You could try using the Read/Write Attribute Step in VBAI to manually set the flip attribute off before you acquire (make sure to set the flag to always set this attribute even if the current value is the same as what it will set to).
2. If you acquire an image in MAX, is it upside down? Try Clicking on the camera in MAX, acquire, click to another camera or to another device (this will release the resources for the camera), click back on camera again in MAX and acquire again. Repeat this several times and see if you have the same flipping behavior as in VBAI.
3. If you create a new inspection with just an acquisition step, does it still happen? Make sure not to change any of the default attributes for this test case. This will ensure the VBAI step uses the same settings you would see in MAX.
4. What if you try using Snap Shot mode in the acquisition step instead of Immediate mode.
Hope this helps,
Brad