Camera
Captured camera frame with overlay alignment. Place jobs visually on top of the actual material.
The Camera panel manages a workspace camera and the overlay that maps its captured image onto the canvas. Once calibrated and aligned, you can drop a job onto the camera image of your real material and the job lands where you placed it.
A workspace camera is one of the most ergonomic additions to a laser. The setup pays back the first time you place a delicate job in seconds instead of measuring twice.
Opening it
- Default dock zone:
floating - Visible by default: no: open from the Window menu
- Hotkey: no default
What you see
The Camera panel with no camera selected.
Top of the panel: header with the current camera's status text plus a Refresh button (refreshes the device list) and an Update Overlay button.
Then a Device dropdown:
- No camera: when no devices found.
- Choose camera: when devices found but none selected.
- A list of device names, pick one to activate it.
The dropdown is disabled when no active machine profile exists. A message appears: Select or create an active machine profile to choose a camera.
When a camera is selected, the panel shows:
- Overlay status grid: current state of overlay, calibration, alignment.
- Still preview: last captured frame.
- Overlay controls: show/hide, opacity, fit-to-bed (see Align overlay guide).
- Setup controls: quick links to calibration and alignment.
Action row at the bottom:
| Button | Action |
|---|---|
| Refresh Overlay | Refresh overlay state without capturing a new frame. |
| Reset Calibration | Clear the saved calibration. Disabled if none saved. |
| Reset Alignment | Clear the saved alignment. Disabled if none saved. |
Setup row:
| Button | Action |
|---|---|
| Calibrate Lens | Open the Camera Calibration dialog. |
| Align Camera | Open the Camera Alignment dialog. |
What you can do
First-time setup
The three steps in order, each linked to its dialog:
- Pick a camera in the Device dropdown.
- Calibrate the lens: corrects perspective distortion from the camera's optics.
- Align the camera: maps the camera image to the workspace coordinates.
Without these two steps, the overlay will be in the wrong place or distorted.
Update the overlay from a fresh frame
Click Update Overlay. Beam Bench captures a fresh image and uses the saved calibration + alignment to place it on the canvas.
Do this after you change the material (different surface, different reflectivity) or after the head moves to a position where the camera sees the bed.
Reset and re-do
If the overlay is wrong, Reset Calibration or Reset Alignment clears the relevant saved state. Then redo via the dialogs.
Behavior worth knowing
- The panel requires an active machine profile. The camera identity is stored per profile, different machines can have different cameras.
- Calibration is per-lens and per-camera. If you swap lenses or zoom levels, redo calibration.
- Alignment is per-machine and per-camera mount position. If you reposition the camera physically, redo alignment.
- The status text in the header shows the most specific available signal: device status, then captured-frame timestamp, then device count, then No cameras found.
- The Camera panel works alongside the CLI:
beambench-cli camera stateandbeambench-cli camera overlay renderprovide programmatic capture (used for these docs' camera screenshots).