The work aims to solve the quality risk problem caused by failure of GD packaging machine to detect and reject defects before completely wrapping small cigarette packets, because small cigarette packets are prone to breakage, shedding and loss of inner frame paper and breakage and scratching of aluminum foil paper. A new type of visual inspection device for cigarette packet appearance was designed through the study on visual technology, design and fabrication of all-round rotating bracket, integration of PLC control program and IPC system, etc. The angle of rotating bracket was adjusted through many experiments to determine the best installation position and angle for detection. Gaussian kernel filtering, convolution and other methods were used to preprocess the images, and relative entropy was used to analyze the images of aluminum foil paper and inner frame paper with similar colors. In–Sight Explore was combined with remote control design to realize the remote debugging and monitoring of cigarette packet inner frame paper, aluminum foil paper and trademark paper. After the installation of the new visual inspection device, accurate detection of cigarette packet aluminum foil paper, inner frame paper and trademark paper was realized before the trademark paper of small packet was completely wrapped. The detection rejection rate of defective cigarette packets was ≥99.99%, and the error detection rate was ≤0.01%. The designed visual inspection device for small packet can remotely debug and monitor the inner frame paper, aluminum foil paper and trademark paper before the small cigarette packet is completely wrapped, and accurately remove the defective cigarette packets, thus reducing the risk of defective cigarette packets entering the next process and can be popularized and applied to all packaging equipment in the tobacco industry.