Axis 206 camera not streaming

[byteit101]

We seem to have an odd problem, the cRIO can see the camera fine, and can image process on it, but ZomB is not displaying it. Twice, we've had it working (until we reboot the robot), and it just seems to be very random. On the Monday before ship, I opened our dashboard, and the robot was on, and suddenly the camera was on. I was surprised it worked, since it was not working previously, but two minutes later, after I rebooted the robot (same code) and the dashboard, it was gone. I have not seen camera feed from it since. I've stepped into the source of ZomB, and it can connect fine, but the network socket always has no available bytes to read. I've done this multiple times this season, on all of our computers (which worked fine until this season), and it never seems to connect. I am completely baffled.

[Team#2057-Vegas]

this is one of the axis' many faults.. it can do this as well as have days when it will turn on.. and days it wont (power that is) just work with it and hope for the best.

2057

[byteit101]

Originally Posted by Team#2057-Vegas

this is one of the axis' many faults.. it can do this as well as have days when it will turn on.. and days it wont (power that is) just work with it and hope for the best.

2057

Wow, I completely reset the camera, and it worked last meeting! lets see if it still works today :-)

[Anupam Goli]

Some teams have been having this issue. Test my theory that "Everytime you reboot the robot and immediately turn on the dashboard, it doesn't give you an image, but you shut the dashboard off and later get it back up, it is working". It may be that you need to delay the instantiation of the axis camera for a few seconds or something like that.

[willishf]

Just to verify that the latest dashboard/firmware does appear to have a problem displaying video. I stopped and started the dashboard didn't fix. I issued a reboot command from dashboard and after the reboot the camera image started working.

[byteit101]

This issue is back, and we were pulling our hair out at Purdue over it, but I think I've narrowed it down to a cRIO fault.
It worked the first time we powered up the robot in the pits, but then stopped, but we were also able to get it to run about 2 other times after numerous dashboard and robot reboots. running some quick tests on our spare cRIO, we rebooted it several times, and all times the dashboard showed the camera instantly. The next day, we swapped out cRIO's, and our next two (rather rough) matches and practice field had camera feed (videos soon!), but then it died again, and no more camera on this one.

So, do you think it is the cRIO or something else?

[willishf]

Based on advice from Michael Tid via email we updated with the latest axis firmware, added the FRC userid and set the camera to get IP via DHCP. The camera is plugged into port 2 via crossover cable. All of the problems we had experienced with v28 and the camera not working went away. Axis provides software for autodiscovery so it sounds like this is part of the cRIO library for finding the camera.

We ended up taking the camera completely out of the robot config because we were having problems during practice at regionals with a non-responsive robot. I have seen on more than one occasion the video lag live by 3-5 seconds which tells me the cRIO will buffer and send all the video. If you are having bandwidth/communication issues then critical commands for driving the robot are probably getting stuck in the queue behind the video.

We also moved the radio, got rid of the radio shack power connector on the radio to try and address the problem. We did manage to get reliable communication but not sure what fixed the problem. I think it is a combination of factors.

[byteit101]

Originally Posted by willishf

Based on advice from Michael Tid via email we updated with the latest axis firmware, added the FRC userid and set the camera to get IP via DHCP.

Where is this updated firmware you speak of located?

DHCP? does the cRIO have a DHCP server on it?

[Robby Unruh]

We have our camera on port 2 in the cRIO, with it's default IP 192.168.0.90. We're able to see our camera just fine with the original dashboard. I'll tell you if it works for us at our meeting tonight with ZomB, it could be another bug.

[Greg McKaskle]

The cRIO does not have a DHCP server on it, but once the camera times out waiting for a DHCP server, it will self-assign to 192.168.0.90.

If you had the camera statically set to 0.90 and the cRIO port two also set to 0.90, that would cause a problem with camera communications.

I believe that both ports on the cRIO have link LEDs. Use them to determine if the cRIO may have a loose enet connector. Also test a different crossover cable and wiggle the connector at the camera.

Swapping cRIO and seeing a temporary improvement doesn't really convince me of what the problem is.

As for the lag, TCP buffers don't wait in line. The lag would be per port. If you have large images and lots of them, you could put a bigger CPU load on the cRIO, but other than that, the UDP packets from the DS and the TCP packets to and from the camera and DS have little to do with one another.

Greg McKaskle