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Originally Posted by Craig Putnam
Has anyone else experienced this, have any ideas about what is going on or how to correct it?
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There is bound to be some error between where the camera appears to be pointing and where the centroid pixel is located on the imager. Many factors contribute to this error including optical distortion and misalignment of the imager relative to the centerline of the lens.
There is a fairly easy way to deal with this error and it's built into the camera software. Mount the FIRST green light such that it's center is at the same height as the camera lens and position your 'bot so that the center line of the lens extends through the center of the FIRST green light. Do this as far away from the green light as you can. Now fire up the robot controller and camera and let the camera lock onto the green light. Once it's locked on to the target, enter the tracking menu and then the interactive PWM sub-menu and type in the letter 'f' to set the new pan center position and then the letter 'm' to set the new tilt center position. Now type in the letter 'o' and write down the pan and tilt values. Once you've done that, type in 'p' to return to the main tracking menu and then 'w' to save the changes. Take the values you wrote down and plug them into the equation in terminal.c and recompile, reload the code and see if the software reports zero degrees for the pan and tilt angles when the camera re-acquires the target.
I intend to release one or two more builds of the camera software in the coming weeks and I'll try to include this procedure in the documentation. I think I'll start a camera FAQ and include this information as well.
-Kevin