Measuring yarn diameter using inexpensive optical sensors

In this paper, the inexpensive optical sensor of a common computer mouse is proposed to measure yarn diameter. This measurement allows a progressive control of the yarn production processes in the textile industry. The optical mouse sensor is an inexpensive sensor that includes all parts of a complete vision system compacted together in a reduced size: illumination, lens, and CMOS optical sensor. The selected CMOS sensor has a two dimensional array of 30×30 pixels that can be used to obtain the diameter at different positions of the yarn with a resolution of 60 μm. Additionally, the sensor can work at very high frame rates allowing the development of real-time monitoring applications.