Pixy - Axis Camera Alternative?
 

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...-vision-sensor

Pixy is a camera that connect to the cRio through a master-slave configuration with an arduino. It can also use many other signals like i2C and even analog and digital.

Is this camera FRC legal if bought off the kickstarter?

Would this camera make a superior replacement for the Axis Cameras? (I think it would :D )

Re: Pixy - Axis Camera Alternative?
 

Another question is whether this will work well with retroreflective tape or only bright colors.

Re: Pixy - Axis Camera Alternative?
 

If you arrange your LEDs as the left half one colour, and the right half a different colour, it could show up as a colour tag. I feel like the camera would pick it up well, considering the Axis make the colour pretty visible on the direct feed.

Re: Pixy - Axis Camera Alternative?
 

I don't believe that the limited availability through kickstarter meets FIRST's definition of a VENDOR, and would not be legal. However, if you purchased it directly when it is generally available, that would be legal.

You would need some type of blinders for this to have a chance of working.

Re: Pixy - Axis Camera Alternative?
 

I ordered one with the pan/tilt option. So in a few weeks I'll be able to report back on how it does on distance and refecting tape.

Based on how they are doing this, it should be a COTS product by January. Their ship date is November, so once they ship the present order for 2,500 they should be good to go.

Re: Pixy - Axis Camera Alternative?
 

This is an evolution of the Cmucam. It's blob detection. Using Opencv and NI vision can give true object detection and more. Trade off of cost and processing power. This could have some nice application on robots.

Re: Pixy - Axis Camera Alternative?
 

Yes, it's blobs, but one robots blob is another robots object. :cool:

I'm looking at the off board processing. They are doing most of the heavy lifting on the camera processor and sending it down to the host for further processing. So the overall load is less, which frees up CPU cycles for other processing. Does that open up a chance for two cameras to get more exact range information?

It's also not as demanding to know OpenCV, so teams with less hard core programming resources may be able to use this easier.

Anyway, it's a while before I get one, but I'm excited about the possibilities!

Re: Pixy - Axis Camera Alternative?
 

I agree this could be a really cool choice if it works out.

However OpenCV in Python on a laptop on the robot is really not hard to use.
Many working examples exist.

Re: Pixy - Axis Camera Alternative?
 

The LPC4300 used on the new CMUcam is more or less on par with the power in the Crio, so it would be viable to push all processing onto the camera board. The only limitation is the low internal memory which can't buffer a single frame at full resolution :mad: for the price they probably could have thrown an SDRAM chip or PSRAM on their for a little extra.

Re: Pixy - Axis Camera Alternative?
 

Hummm. I wonder what you would get if you pointed that straight up at the ceiling. Maybe a little adjustment to the camera settings, a little code tweak. It maybe almost there. I'm talking about the way our ancestors navigated.

Re: Pixy - Axis Camera Alternative?
 

Esso roadmaps? :ahh:

Kickstart PIXY camera has image rec & I2C
 

Our team just ordered a couple of these cameras for next season. Take a look !!!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...-vision-sensor

50 frames per sec of processed target XY coordinates - no need to transmit the image data over saturated WiFi links!!! Simple I2C interface.

Re: Kickstart PIXY camera has image rec & I2C
 

just wondering about this camera, err....camera and software I guess. It seems all fine, but the question still remains, how does it act in different environments? The problem with using colours is that the difference between different rooms in the same building, or even different parts of a room, dramatically change the value of the object.

Re: Pixy - Axis Camera Alternative?
 

The hue algorithm they brag about is intended to remove the intensity variations. My expectation is that if you train it with an LED ring light, it will have a very strong affinity to your LED color. This should play well with the retro-reflective tape FRC uses and should eliminate effects of ambient lights. You may want to pick a unique LED color for your ring light so you don't lock onto another robot thinking it is a target - unless that is what you want?
Obviously no one has tried this on an FRC field yet. Given it is available to everyone, I cant see any reason it would not be legal. If they run out (which they have not yet), it is no different than the year that FRC consumed the world supply of fisher price motors and many teams were left wanting. We ordered two for $115 and will post how they work out when we get them. Not much of a risk and potentially a big advancement if they live up to expectations.

Re: Pixy - Axis Camera Alternative?
 

we use ir light because a) the kinect has an ir camera (and the asus xtion that we will be using from now on) and b) it doesnt cause people to look away if the robot is facing towards you. moving on.

Given how it apparently can track anything, I assume it preforms a blur (perhaps gaussian) then thresholds. This could work in multiple enviroments, but could you teach it to track a white square with whatever is inside it(chains, at the terra heute regional, sunlight went through windows, through the 3pt goal and nearly blinded us, but due to a failsafe check, it didnt.) The issue is that the target is not static, it change.

I can see a lot of teams using this for piece pick up (autonomously?). We had both sides of this working for frisbees, crio and vision, just didnt have a method of picking them up XD. I still think teams will stay with the axis camera due to familiarity, and other, more courageous teams, will attempt to use pixy.

Re: Pixy - Axis Camera Alternative?
 

This would make picking up pieces a lot easier; then you could place/shoot them based on another pixy or an axis/kinect. This a neat idea to play around with for games in the future.

Re: Pixy - Axis Camera Alternative?
 

I picked up a pack of 10 of these so I could use them to teach classes. But, I am really intrigued about the idea of using it not just to spot targets for shooting but to spot and distinguish game objects.

Re: Pixy - Axis Camera Alternative?
 

I looked through the project page. This camera just seems AMAZING!!! Me Want! However, $80 is still quite expensive for personal robot projects. The Ping Pong ball tracker is cool because of the ping pong ball size and speed

Re: Pixy - Axis Camera Alternative?
 

They posted that they have the first 2000 units, but are still playing around with the software/firmware. (Sound familiar? Hardware is done, but .... )

They did post a video of the tracking software in action This is all done on the local board. The USB cable is only being used for power.

Pretty snappy response time, can't wait to get my hands on mine.

Re: Pixy - Axis Camera Alternative?
 

Pixy still looks like an attractive camera option. Still taking orders, but delivery is not until after build ends. For teams with late competitions, it could be in your 30lb limit. Open source (hardware and software) before kickoff.

Check out the very impressive demos:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...n-sensor/posts

Re: Pixy - Axis Camera Alternative?
 

I just received my Pixy camera. I have only played with it for about 10 Minutes. I'm not real impressed with the performance in the wild. Have not played with the settings yet. Has anyone tried one of this yet?

Re: Pixy - Axis Camera Alternative?
 

This camera looks amazing. I am very interested in using this camera for my own projects and FIRST. If anyone has used this i would be very interested to hear your review.

Re: Pixy - Axis Camera Alternative?
 

I like the idea of this but I'd rather use it in tandem with an Axis camera. I'd use it as an alternative to vision processing, but not as the main camera. I don't think the Dashboard can get live feed from this camera.

Re: Pixy - Axis Camera Alternative?
 

I've had one and used it on my PC and it was OK. My platform will be either VEX (metal) or VEX IQ. The distances are a lot smaller. My initial trial was looking at past VEX game parts (the small buckyballs and rings) and it was able to pick them out.

I'm impressed that you got it to work in 10 mins, it took me the better part of an hour to get it to do what I wanted.

Presently it's stuffed in the toy box waiting for me to have time to pull it out again.