[Goldeye]

To everyone who has made a comment about how teams should have simply 'focused' their view on given areas, please realize how difficult a task this really is.

Even under ideal conditions, configuring the camera system was an uncanny feat. In many cases, testing conditions were extremely far from the conditions on a FIRST field, and often extremely detrimental to the camera's function. The java utility could not find any suitable exposure values in my school, due to poor lighting. Still, we used substitute colors that the camera managed to see, and attempted to continue working with those.

There were many problems occuring with many parts of the camera routines. In addition to the troublesome values, controlling the robot at a speed appropriate to the camera readings was as difficult, robot-dependant task. Endless amounts of tweaks were needed for that. As problems came up, we solved them, for example, requiring a minimum size of any object the camera found. Still, by the end of the 6 weeks, we couldn't get the bot happily tracking anything.

Between all these problems and the need to get the robot tracking on near-ideal conditions, there's almost no time to create solutions for changing environmental conditions off of the field. I congratulate teams such as 111 for their ability and time to create such a thorough, reliable code, but for those making rash comments making it seem like an easy thing to do... If FIRST plans to provide such a tool, they should take every reasonable step to avoid conflicting with it. Last year with the IR, and now with the vision, they're not doing their part to allow the teams to focus on the game challenge rather than the world around it.