Hi All! New user here working on getting the camera set up. I’m not using a lightburn camera; rather a Wyze camera with the Wyze-supplied firmware to change it into a webcam. In any case, I was able to calibrate the lens using the dot pattern (with all captures less than .1) and then did the alignment successfully. (Although I did have to switch over to the default capture to get LB to capture the images.)
What I’m seeing now is that when I open the camera pane and look at the preview, it is nice and clear, even being able to see the vector lines that I engraved on my workbase. But when I hit “update overlay” the resulting overlay is a much lower resolution making it hard to distinguish much of anything.
I am running Windows 10 so I have read about the “capture” not working properly which is why I switched it over to default. Are there any other settings in LB that I need to check? As a comparison, captured images from this cam in the Windows 10 camera app are saved at 1920 x 1080.
I have all windows updates installed. Has anyone with similar capture problems done the upgrade to windows 11 and did it fix the issue?
Thanks in advance!!!
Josh
What does this mean? Can you explain further? A screenshot would be helpful.
Can you send a screenshot of this?
Screenshot here too please.
Was it an option not to do this?
I’m on W11 but can’t say. But I doubt this would make any positive difference.
When referring to switching over to default settings for the capture, I was referring to Oz’s 2nd post in this thread: Lightburn forums - wizard won’t capture. In “Settings”, at the bottom of the screen there is a selection to use the “Default capture system” or “Custom camera system”. When I have “Custom camera system” selected (which was the default setting when LB was installed), the wizard will not capture the camera image.
I went into Lightburn again and expanded the camera preview and zoomed out in the workspace and I guess the resolution looks about the same after doing that. I think it was just an optical illusion that it looked much clearer in the preview screen because the image was compressed! Sorry about that!
Wondering if updating to W11 would fix the issue, but I’m not really keen to do so.
Thanks!
Josh
Ah… thanks for clarity on the capture system. New to me.
So does this mean that things are working as expected? As for using the custom capture I suspect this could be solved by working through the permission issues.
I don’t have easy access to a W10 system right now but do you have something like this in privacy settings for your camera?
Notice the LightBurn Access permission at the bottom.
Again, don’t know if W11 would change this for you but I tend to think no.
Yes, I have the same camera privacy options in W10. I do have the “Allow desktop apps to access your camera” enabled. (Note that that last entry isn’t a permission for lightburn; it just shows that lightburn has accessed your camera I believe.)
My camera is functional in lightburn… As long as I have lightburn set to “default capture system” the capture works and I am able to calibrate, align and update the overlay into my workspace. If I have lightburn set to “custom capture system” the capture button does not work during the calibration or alignment and the “update overlay” button in the camera window does not work to paste the camera image onto the workspace.
I’m continuing to try to get the custom capture system to work in order to improve the quality of the camera captures… If I try the capture and trace process shown in this lightburn video: Lightburn camera demo, it doesn’t work nearly as well as in the video. (I am presuming that the custom capture system would do a better job??)
Or maybe my “HD” webcam just isn’t sufficient…
Thanks for your input!
It’s hard to gauge the severity of this without a visual. Can you attach a screenshot of what you’re seeing?
What’s the native resolution of the camera?
I think the native resolution of the webcam is 2.1MP so that could be a limitation…
I took a piece of posterboard and quickly drew a couple shapes with a sharpie marker to give me something to show as an example. The total size of my hand sketch is about 80mm tall and 75mm wide.
Here is a screenshot of the camera view along with the overlay applied to the workspace:
Here is the trace if I adjust the threshold to capture the entire drawing. Note that on the star for example, it cannot distinguish individual lines:
If I adjust the threshold down for better detail, it just starts filtering out parts of the sketch:
Here are a few additional screenshots. I put an 80mm round blank on the workspace as if I was going to set up for a coaster and updated the overlay.
Looking at the full 400mm x 400mm workspace, it isn’t too bad I think:
However, when zooming in as if I were going to place a graphic on the coaster to burn it, it becomes quite pixelated:
Maybe I’m just expecting too much from my 2.1MP webcam… 
I was hoping for better results like in the lightburn camera demo video I posted earlier in the thread where he could trace the star trek logo much more accurately.
As a follow-up question, if I were to purchase the real lightburn camera, I’d prefer to pay a bit more for the 8MP with the higher quality lens (the W version). If I have a square workspace (400mm x 400mm), I assume I would still be able to use the wide version of the camera?
It looks like your issues are from general image quality. The preview window may look better because it’s higher contrast and not semi-transparent but if you look closely the image is quite low detail and chunky. There are some extreme aliasing artifacts on the outer portions of the image. Then if you take into consideration that it’s only using what looks like about a third of the pixels to derive the overlay then you don’t have much detail left to work from.
Yes. This should work but you’d simply be discarding more of the available image.
That’s what I figured it would end up being… So I am going to go ahead and purchase one of the lightburn cameras…
On their purchase page, they say that the 8MP with the “N” lens provides “comparable image quality” to the 5MP cameras. That’s why I was looking at the 8MP Wide cameras to get better image quality even though it will be discarding more of the sides.
In your opinion, will the 8MP W 85 degree (with the higher quality lens) mounted a bit higher give better image quality than the 8MP N 75 degree mounted a bit lower?
Thanks again for your help!!!
Josh
I don’t have experience with those so really can’t say. In general I’d pick the better optics since that will limit image quality. Are you ever planning to expand your bed? That might also be a factor in your decision making process.
That was my thinking as well; as long as I’m spending the $$ on a replacement camera, go with the better quality optics and higher resolution sensor.
No plans to expand anytime in the near future. I’d like to upgrade to a CO2 or fiber laser someday, but adding on another $100 for a different camera (if needed) at that time will be negligible compared to the cost of the laser itself!
No doubt. Not sure if you’re aware but LightBurn doesn’t currently support fiber lasers in case that was a factor.
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