<< return to Pixycam.com

Measure the width of a continuous strip of material?

Pixy Software
#1

I would like to measure the width of bread dough leaving a mixer and rolling machine. The dough comes out in a continuous ribbon about 1/4" thick, anywhere from 2" to 16" wide and is moving at about 80 ft/min on a flat conveyor. The dough color varies but it is normally dark beige to light brown. I know that Pixy can provide dimensions i.e., width and height of a round, square or rectangular object. With the camera mounted fixed and overhead , can it provide the width of a continuously moving strip of material?

Thanks for any help.
John K.
Algoma, Wi

#2

Hello,
Pixy provides continuous data, so I don’t think that would be an issue.

Brown and beige are not very good colors for Pixy however because they are not “saturated” (brown is essentially unsaturated orange). You might consider making the background color (what the dough is resting on) a nice saturated color and inferring the width by looking at the background.

Hope this helps!

Edward

1 Like
#3

Edward,

Thanks for the idea.
I am doing something similar to measure boxes using laser displacement i.e., a distance sensor on both sides of the conveyor. For this, I could slide a thin piece of stationary sheet metal the width of the conveyor painted like green.Get the width dimensions of the left and right green rectangles and crank it thru an Arduino.

Thanks again!

John K.

#4

Sounds good – let us know how it goes :slight_smile: