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Unread 21-01-2012, 14:12
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FRC #0639 (Code Red)
Team Role: Programmer
 
Join Date: Jan 2012
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Re: Kinect Video Mode and Resolutions

Quote:
Originally Posted by shuhao View Post
No, that mode is actually quite unstable from what I've heard.

You're not get that much better performance with that, in fact, it probably will degrade your performance as your image size is 4x bigger (than 640x480) meaning more pixels to search through.
Real-time performance is really not an issue here. We're grabbing and processing single frames, and I can't imagine what you'd need a live IR camera feed for.


Quote:
Originally Posted by mikegrundvig View Post
Now you have me worried with the "read the manual" icon. The students worked really hard on this idea and none of the mentors saw a problem with it. Did we miss something?
Problem is on taking the data from the Kinect (quite a bit of low-level stuff) and putting it through image processing. If you get past that programming challenge all should be well.


Quote:
I would also be very careful with "high power IR LEDs" as the human eye cannot see the output and therefore you will not know to blink or look away and could potentially damage your eyes if the power levels are high enough. Just make sure you are keeping things at safe levels (some research may be needed to determine what is safe).
The Kinect mounts an IR laser which projects a matrix of dots with a holographic diffuser; the dots show up incredibly bright (>200 luminance vs <20 for rest of scene) on the IR feed. Considering that the Kinect is designed to be pointed towards people's eyes for long durations, it follows that the IR laser is quite weak. You won't need an LED with high enough power to be dangerous.

Quote:
I would be careful with the assumption that IR is a better part of the spectrum to be in than visible. The bright lighting used at many FRC events has non-negligible IR content to it if I remember correctly. Not saying you'll be worse off than in the visible spectrum (and you may be much better), but I wouldn't assume you're much better off.
The grayscale IR image will be practically always better than a color image.