Overlay does not line up

You see

The camera overlay shows the bed. You move the head and a feature on the bed; the head's reported position on the canvas does not match where the head appears in the camera image.

What is happening

The transform between camera-image coordinates and workspace coordinates is off. Either calibration is wrong, alignment is wrong, or both.

Fix

If you have not run calibration and alignment

Run both. See Calibrate the camera and Align the overlay. Without them, the overlay is just an image and Beam Bench cannot put it where it belongs.

If alignment was a long time ago and the camera moved

Camera mounts loosen, fall, get bumped. Redo alignment. The previous alignment data is invalid.

If the bed has thickness variation

The alignment assumes the bed (or material surface) is at a known height. If you place taller material, the perspective changes slightly, especially with wide-angle cameras.

Acceptable workaround: align with the material at typical height, accept small error for other thicknesses.

Better fix: use a head-mounted camera (where the camera moves with the head and works at any height the head can be at).

If only the edges of the camera view are off

Symptom of lens distortion not being corrected. The calibration is too coarse, add more calibration points around the edges of the camera view and re-solve.

If the overlay is mirrored

Possible cause: the camera is physically mounted at 180° rotation from what alignment expects. Try rotating the physical camera or re-running alignment with the new orientation.

Verify it worked

• A test feature you click on in the camera image lines up with the head position when you jog there.
• The overlay quality reported by alignment is > 95%.

Still stuck?

• Camera Alignment dialog reference.
• Camera Calibration dialog reference.
• Align the overlay guide.
• Post in the Facebook group with a camera screenshot and your setup details.