Are you testing your settings through NI Vision Assistant? If not, you should be. You can quickly swap in different filters and adjust parameters and watch how it affects your image results.
We are using an RGB Color Threshold filter (as opposed to an HSL filter) looking for primarily red and we are using a red LED ring. It works quite nice.
It would also be helpful to know what language you're programming in. If you are using LABview, then I think you have access to the full suite of image processing. If you are using Java, you only have access to a limited set of functions - so you want to only use those in your prototyping in Vision Assistant.
If you haven't already read this whitepaper - it's a must read. It specifically deals with this years game.
https://decibel.ni.com/content/docs/DOC-20173
Dale Van Voorst