Cognex In-Sight Not Acquiring — Online/Offline & Trigger Checks

Cognex · beginner · 20 min

When a Cognex In-Sight camera stops grabbing images, the cause is usually the Online/Offline state, a missed trigger, or an editing lock — not a broken camera. Work these checks before swapping hardware.

ℹ️ In-Sight has a deliberate rule: the vision system must be Offline to edit a job, and Online to run and respond to triggers. Most "it stopped taking pictures" calls are simply the wrong state.

The Online/Offline rule

Every In-Sight vision system is either Online or Offline, and this single setting explains most acquisition problems:

• Online — the job runs and the camera responds to acquisition triggers and exchanges data (I/O, network) with the line.
• Offline — the camera will not respond to a trigger. You must go Offline to edit the job in In-Sight Explorer / EasyBuilder or Vision Suite; while Offline, production triggers are ignored.

So if the camera "isn't taking pictures" in production, the first thing to confirm is that it is Online.

Step-by-step checks

1. Confirm Online. In In-Sight Explorer / Vision Suite, check the Online/Offline indicator and set the camera Online. If someone left it Offline after editing, that alone stops all triggered acquisition.
2. Check who else is connected. If you see "the In-Sight sensor is locked," another In-Sight Explorer / Vision Suite session already has the editing lock. Close the other session (or disconnect the other PC) before you can take control.
3. Verify the trigger source. Confirm the AcquireImage trigger setting matches how the line fires the camera (Camera / External / Manual / Network / Continuous). A job set to Manual or External will look dead if the expected trigger never arrives.
4. Confirm the physical trigger. For a hardware trigger, check the trigger sensor and its wiring to the camera's input; watch the input state in the software when the part passes.
5. Allow for the power-cycle timeout. On In-Sight 5.x firmware and later, if a camera is power-cycled and no Ethernet link is detected, it can miss triggers until a ~30-second network timeout completes and the unit fully restarts. Wait for full startup before judging it faulty.
6. Check job compatibility after a model swap. Default AcquireImage parameters vary by In-Sight model. If a job built on one model was loaded onto a different model, re-verify the acquisition parameters — a mismatch can leave the camera unable to acquire correctly.
7. Network discovery. If the camera won't even appear, verify cabling (In-Sight 5000-series units usually autosense straight/crossover) and that the PC and camera are on the same subnet.

When it's really hardware

Only after Online state, trigger source, wiring, and job/model compatibility all check out should you suspect the illumination, lens, or sensor. Capture a live image with the camera Offline (manual acquire) to confirm the optics and lighting before replacing anything.