Camera offset a lot.... odd

[billbo911]

Alan pretty much nailed it on the head. This is a "problem" many teams addressed last year as well.
Simply put, the mechanical alignment of the optics to the cmos sensor are not perfect. In addition, the optical components used have some manufacturing tolerances that can add to the "mis-alignment" as well. Just follow the advice Alan gave and you will be in good shape. What you need to be confident in is the cameras ability to reproduce it's positioning each time. If it does that, then you will be able to get accurate tracking information from it.

[d.courtney]

we had this problem too, it happened every time our robot was close enough to think it was two lights (because our said value for two lights weren't changed when we brought the light down for easier testing) I don't know why it did it, and am currently trying to figure it out for myself, but when I increased the maximum size for one light *magic* no shifting massively to one corner.

EDIT: my problem was because my fellow programmer made a change while I was gone the build before (and forgot to tell me). he found that the position of our camera on the robot would lose one light or the other (due to the nature of our attachment) when coming within scoring distance of a spider between two lights, his solution, focus on one light primarily as to avoid losing both (which happened one in every ten times) hence why in my case it happened for when the light size was greater then one... so in the end our identical problems were not so identical. He just told me now. on msn.
Hooray for communication, and a night spent in confusion.

[Kevin Watson]

Originally Posted by billbo911

Alan pretty much nailed it on the head. This is a "problem" many teams addressed last year as well.
Simply put, the mechanical alignment of the optics to the cmos sensor are not perfect. In addition, the optical components used have some manufacturing tolerances that can add to the "mis-alignment" as well. Just follow the advice Alan gave and you will be in good shape. What you need to be confident in is the cameras ability to reproduce it's positioning each time. If it does that, then you will be able to get accurate tracking information from it.

Yep, this is the case. My code has the ability to track on any pixel, not just the center one. Just allow the camera to find the light and then enter the "Interactive PWM Adjustment Menu" and step the servos until it is aligned. Now unplug your servos from the RC and enter 'p' and then 'x' so that camera data will start to stream to the terminal screen again. If you managed to do this without disturbing the camera, the error values on the screen tell you where the optically-centered pixel is located relative to the center pixel in the imager array. Use those offset values to calculate the new tilt and/or pan target pixels and enter them in to tracking.h or use the interactive tracking menu to set the new values.

-Kevin