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Providing Heat Dissipation (blaze)#

You must provide sufficient heat dissipation to maintain a stable camera temperature, which is essential for reliable distance measurement.

General Guidelines#

Since each installation is unique, Basler only provides the following general guidelines:

  • Monitor the Temperature State parameter. This is the easiest way to check whether any of the temperatures measured internally are within the critical or over temperature range.
  • An alternative option is to monitor the internal temperature of the camera using the Device Temperature to make sure that the temperature at the different locations stays within the recommended range during normal operation:
    • Sensor board: 60 °C
    • Laser board: 75 °C
    • CPU: 75 °C
  • Provide sufficient heat dissipation. Consider one of the following options:
    • Mounting the camera on a substantial, thermally conductive component that can act as a heat sink.
    • Using a fan to provide an air flow over the camera.
  • Choose sensible camera settings to avoid overheating.
    Parameters like Operating Mode, Exposure Time, and especially the Frame Rate have a huge influence on the internal temperature of the camera. Therefore, Basler recommends choosing settings that are just right for your application instead of, e.g., operating the camera at speeds that are not really required. Other benefits of this approach are:
    • A camera will deliver better images at lower temperatures.
    • The life expectancy of the camera will be increased.

Over Temperature Protection#

Basler blaze cameras are equipped with temperature sensors that measure the temperature of the laser board, the sensor board, and the CPU.

If temperatures at which safe operation of the camera can't be guaranteed anymore are reached, image acquisition will be stopped automatically, which also means that the VCSELs are turned off. If this happens, try to reduce the temperature of the camera by lowering the exposure time or the frame rate or by providing more heat dissipation (see above).

Temperatures at which the image acquisition will be switched off:

  • Sensor board: 75 °C
  • Laser board: 85 °C
  • CPU: 85 °C

Restarting Image Acquisition After Automatic Acquisition Stop#

To find out when it is safe to turn image acquisition back on, follow these steps:

  1. Check the value of the TemperatureState parameter.
    If the state is Ok, the camera has cooled down sufficiently.

Alternatively, you can check the temperature at various locations in the camera:

  1. Set the DeviceTemperatureSelector parameter to the desired location.
  2. Get the value of the DeviceTemperature parameter.
    If the temperature has dropped sufficiently and is in the safe temperature range again, you can turn image acquisition back on. The safe temperature range is specified in the "Environmental Requirements" section of your camera model topic.
  3. Execute the ClearLastError command.
  4. Start image acquisition.