When setting the reference hole and second hole on ReferenceStripFeeder either manually or using Auto Setup, you have to choose your reference and second hole or part according to the standards used in SMT tape. Primarily this means that the reference hole should be the first hole 2mm from the first part in the direction of travel.

For ReferenceStripFeeder the ‘Direction of Travel’ and ‘Direction of Feed’ are confusing since nothing is being fed; the tape is fixed to a location. With the tape laid vertically if the holes are on the left of the part the Direction of Travel is from the top to the bottom, North to South. If the holes are on the right of the part the Direction of Travel is from the bottom to the top, South to North. With the tape laid horizontally if the holes are on the bottom of the part the Direction of Travel is from the left to the right, West to East. If the holes are on the top of the part the Direction of Travel is from the right to the left, East to West. The tape can be in any orientation on the table but the direction of travel along the tape always follows this rule. For clarification, the image below shows tapes oriented at +90°, 180°, -90°, and 0° relative to the machine in that order left to right. It also shows where the first and second hole and their corresponding parts are located in the tape:

If your pipeline is not working, look at the DetectCircularSymmetry method, more specifically copy the Pipeline for the ReferenceStripFeeder.

A CvPipeline can be customized to clean up the camera image for improved recognition. The pipeline can be configured by clicking Edit Pipeline in the feeders configuration.

The final pipeline stage (with detected circles) should have the name 'results' (plural, lower-case, no quotes). For detecting the feeding circles in the tape, DetectFixedCirclesHough should be used - if it isn't finding the correct circles either your camera's units-per-pixel is set incorrectly or you need to do further clean up of the camera image first.

During the feeder setup wizard, the strip feeder hole debug colors are as follows:

• Red are any holes that are found.
• Orange are holes that passed the distance check but failed the line check. **
• Blue are holes that passed the line check but are considered superfluous. **
• Green passed all checks and are considered good.

** - only displayed when Alt/Option is held down when the setup wizard is started.

When picking from the strip feeder, OpenPnP will lower the nozzle to the Z value specified on the first reference hole. The Z value for the second reference hole is ignored.

To pick up parts taking the right angle into account it has to be set in "Rotation in Tape".

The Rotation in Tape setting must be interpreted relative to the tape's orientation, regardless of how the feeder/tape is oriented on the machine.

Proceed as follows:

1. Look at the neutral upright orientation of the part package/footprint as drawn inside your E-CAD library.

2. ⚠ Double-check you are in the library, do not look at the part in the project PCB, this is not neutral!

3. Note how pin 1, polarity, cathode etc. are oriented. This is your 0° for the part.

   

4. Look at the tape so that the sprocket holes are on top. This is your 0° tape orientation (EIA-481 industry standard).

5. Determine how the part is rotated inside the tape pocket, relative from its upright orientation in (1). Positive rotation goes counter-clockwise, negative clockwise. This is the Rotation in Tape.

   

6. Our example has a 90° clockwise rotation from its upright orientation in (1), so the correct Rotation in Tape is -90°.

7. ⚠ If your OpenPnP versions is older than 2022-06-10 (check Help/About), the meaning of this rotation was not yet conformant to the EIA-481 industry standard. Add 90° to Rotation in Tape, if you have an older Version! And don't worry, the Rotation in Tape will be automatically adjusted when you upgrade to a newer OpenPnP version, later.

• Strip Feeder Auto Setup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fs-SwSq5AZw

This error usually occurs when the strip feeder vision system cannot find the next tape hole. The most common causes of this problem are attempting to feed from the wrong end of the tape, incorrect units per pixel settings on the camera, or poor lighting.

First verify the tape strip orientation and first hole match that as shown above in Tape Strip Orientation.

See https://github.com/openpnp/openpnp/wiki/Setup-and-Calibration_General-Camera-Setup#set-units-per-pixel to set and verify the units per pixel settings and make sure your camera is getting enough light. There should be strong contrast between the tape itself and the holes. The feeders CvPipeline can be adjusted to help address issues with your particular setup of camera and lighting, however in general it's best to start with a good hardware setup.

A good way to check that your units per pixel settings are correct is to right click the camera view and turn on the following options:

• Reticle -> Fiducial
• Reticle -> Options -> Units -> Millimeters
• Reticle -> Options -> Shape -> Circle
• Reticle -> Options -> Size -> 1.5

With these settings you should see a small circle appear in the camera view. This is a 1.5mm circle. If you line this circle up with a tape hole it should appear exactly the same size. If it doesn't, you need to adjust your units per pixels settings.