Are You Using A Camera To Align Their Shooter?

[Greg McKaskle]

Originally Posted by euhlmann

However I wouldn't recommend NI vision. It's very poorly documented. Next year we will probably switch to OpenCV

The documentation for NIVision is located in program files/National Instruments/Vision/Documentation. In the Vision folder, there should also be shortcuts to examples and to additional pdf documentation. If using a text language, the CVI documentation would be what you are interested in. I also highly recommend the vision concepts document.

I'm curious if your feedback is based on the contents of these documents, or on the ability to find them?

Greg McKaskle

[cbf]

Originally Posted by Greg McKaskle

The documentation for NIVision is located in program files/National Instruments/Vision/Documentation. In the Vision folder, there should also be shortcuts to examples and to additional pdf documentation. If using a text language, the CVI documentation would be what you are interested in. I also highly recommend the vision concepts document.

I'm curious if your feedback is based on the contents of these documents, or on the ability to find them?

Greg --

I'm Erik's programming mentor on 2877. The documentation problems weren't so serious that we couldn't get our Vision work. In fact, we just came back from the WPI District event and we had the only 20 point autonomous there. We didn't miss a single vision-assisted goal the entire weekend, when our drive train was actually working.

The lack of documentation is for things like annotating an image (the imaqOverlay calls just didn't work for us), or what the "float" pixel value means in the imaqDraw family of calls. See my (essentially) unanswered questions at: https://decibel.ni.com/content/thread/43729?tstart=0.

Also, although we almost certainly had the best Vision at WPI, doing it on the RoboRio is slow, so we'll probably go for an on-board co-processor next year. And it's doubtful if the NI libraries would be available for any of the co-processors we'd consider.

[IronicDeadBird]

The big thing I want to emphasize with your robot if you are using vision is the closer you are to the target the less disruptive light can be in the way and the more accurate vision can be.

[AlexD744]

Originally Posted by IronicDeadBird

Any teams on here have any success with GRIP?

We're using GRIP, and competed this week at orlando. No problems reported from the driver. In fact, the robot made every autonomous shot it took, so it was working pretty well. Let me know if you have any questions.

[FRC2501]

Originally Posted by alexpell00

After watching week 0.5 & 1 I was curious how many teams are actually using a camera to make sure they can shoot accurately. Thanks!

Our team has been able to get our robot shooting with "vision assist".

We use two USB webcams, one in the RIO and one in the Kangaroo. The Kangaroo has GRIP running on it and is set to broadcast the contours out to NetworkTables. From there our robot program (C++) on the RIO takes the numbers and adjusts our robot's drive motors to center the robot side to side. We then use a potentiometer on our shooter arm to adjust it to the right angle and then it fires. We have been making about 24/25 shots at the batter, and 20/25 from the defenses.

Our second camera in the RIO is so the drivers have some human vision on the field, because we haven't figured out how to publish video from the kangaroo to the driverstation.

We plan to get the robot shooting in auto during this week and hope to do good at 10,000 lakes in a few days!

[euhlmann]

Originally Posted by IronicDeadBird

The big thing I want to emphasize with your robot if you are using vision is the closer you are to the target the less disruptive light can be in the way and the more accurate vision can be.

We didn't notice a difference between vision when we were close vs far at either of our two regionals. With correct camera exposure settings and tuned vision filtering, you can completely eliminate overhead lighting and tower LEDs from your image.

[Mister_E]

Originally Posted by cjl2625

We are having great luck with RoboRealm; I find it more powerful than GRIP.
However I don't think RoboRealm has updated networktables compatibility for this year's control system. As a result, I devised a workaround using HTTP (RoboRealm sends data im an HTTP request to a local Python HTTP server, and then use PyNetworkTables to share the data with the robot.)
Perhaps it's not the most efficient method, but it works fine for me.

Using a Kangaroo & RoboRealm. No problems with NetworkTables; even ran an instance of RoboRealm on the Driver Station computer to port NT values to an Arduino Nano (in a hat with LEDS) & an Uno that lit up to relay vision tracking & shooter speed progress. Highest OPR at SBPLI Regional and went 8/9 shooting in auto in quals. I blame the carpet for our misses, heh.

[ThomasClark]

Originally Posted by FRC2501

Our second camera in the RIO is so the drivers have some human vision on the field, because we haven't figured out how to publish video from the kangaroo to the driverstation.

Use the "Publish Video" operation in GRIP, and the GRIP SmartDashboard extension with the IP set to the Kangaroo's IP address.