Onboard Computer

[protoserge]

This should be a good one.

[billbo911]

There are several low cost single board "PCs" that are capable of performing adequately for offboard vision processing in FRC.

Rasberry Pi has been successfully used, BeagleBones as well.
There are a couple more that come to mind that should be considered.

There is a new Beaglebone Black listed at $45, that looks very promising.
The PCDuino ($60) has been tested by 2073 and is capable of providing tracking data at 15-20 fps. We will be using this and performing further evaluations in off season competitions this year.

Our experience is that the combination of (PCDuino + USB webcam + uSD card) can come in at a cost of about $110. I'm certain the price and performance can be matched or bettered by some of the newer offerings already available and those that will be available soon.

[ekapalka]

Is it just me, or did the words "desktop computer" in the original post somehow become hyper linked to advertisements? If it's not, I swear I didn't do that
[edit] ...what...? It's only happening with chrome...

[protoserge]

If it is Vigilink, I think there was something enabled in the forum not to long ago to get some ad revenue for CD. I thought the mod shut it off since it was so intrusive.

[ekapalka]

Thanks! I was getting worried. In the time since my last post I uninstalled Chrome and started up an antivirus scan... I guess I can stop that now

[faust1706]

Whenever the robot got power, so did our on board processor. We, when we turned on the robot, the vision processor booted up, and the vision program was set to autoboot upon start up, so we didn't have to do anything extra while putting the robot on the field. And the Kinect2 might not be hacked in time for competition next year. Still hoping.