[slavik262]

Heh... We also coded the robot in C++ last year. The camera was quite the adventure. For the majority of the season no matter what programming approach I tried the thing didn't work. Then during our second competition I found out that the metal mounting bracket for the camera had been holding the reset button down the entire season, forcing a power cycle on the camera every 15 seconds. I nearly cried.

Even once that was taken care of, the exposure rate and contrast constantly had to be tweaked. Only in the end by using the sample code provided by WPI did we get half-decent results.

The moral I took from this story is that while the camera can be used wonderfully during autonomous and to assist the drivers, your robot should not be built around a strategy that heavily depends on the camera (last year we had a robot with a movable turret that was supposed to use camera-assisted aiming). Use the camera instead to augment your strategy.

I will say, though, I'm extremely excited to be allowed enough network bandwidth this season to send entire camera frames to the dashboard. A live view from the eyes of the robot will do wonders for drivers. I'm currently working on a custom dahsboard project focusing on customization and extremely quick and easy configuration; expect a post later in the season once I have something cool to show you guys.