Did a final tweek of the firmware and installed it in the production line. The system will now
1. On Power-up or Reset wait for user input from the (soon to be depreciated) keypad for 20 seconds then default to mode 2 (wider tolerance detection)
2. Should the line stop, the sensor will detect it and reduce the image capture rate (and therefore the back-light polling) by a factor of 16 from 166 Images/Sec to 10 images/Sec, the theory is it will possibly extend the life of the backlight.
Found another supplier of 7″ LED backlight panels, and wait for it, they are US$4.00 each so I ordered 5 off from wayengineer , these are really good for industrial backlighting as they have a very even white light across the whole area. the original strip lights and panel lights I tried are really unsuitable as they are either too small or not diffused (to create even lighting) they all also suffer from being too bright, unless we are working with a really dark bottle and a really dark wine, the current units are perfect.
Stuart, the engineer at WineBottlers Marlborough has made so real neat industrial housings for the backlights I will try and post some pictures of them when I can get the sensor back out of the production line.