Finding green/pink flags

[virtuald]

Originally Posted by DaveD

There are bugs in the current versions of FindColor, GetLargestParticle and InArea. These have been fixed at the beta level and should be published shortly along with the pink-green demo that Brad mentioned above.

Dave D

Shortly, eh?

[Uberbots]

I helped team 1124 make the red/blue target tracker with great success (double thumbs up).

in labview, you basically copy the image from the camera, do a color threshold for each picture, do a particle report for each picture, and decide which one of those reports is the "top" color and which is the "bottom" color.

once you have that data, you run a loop as follows:
for each "top color:
check if the area of the color is big enough. if so:
for each "bottom" color:
check if the bottom color is directly below (with some tolerance) the "top" color.
add the "top" target to the output targets array

that basic algorithm allowed us to differentiate between red/green targets and green/red targets. there was a slight bit of extra post-processing to deal with multiple visible targets (basically you pick the uppermost one or the largest one etc).

what you do with the final target(s) is up to you... we cached the previous target position and velocity to do second-degree motion prediction for the target in case we lose it. (amongst other things)

[wt200999]

It appears as though an update on this matter has been posted (an example)

http://first.wpi.edu/FRC/frcupdates.html

[fordchrist675]

Our programming team has tried all of the listed ideas, and still have had no luck, so we really need some help. Any suggestions please

[Greg McKaskle]

If you really want help, can you break it down? What works, what doesn't, what have you tried, what environment are you using?

My first suggestion would be to try running and learning from one of the vision examples.

Greg McKaskle

[fordchrist675]

We have set up the camera correctly, with the CAT-5 cable. We debugged the code, tried it with the bug , updated all firmware and software and gotten nothing. The CRIO is still getting nothing from the camera

[fordchrist675]

The CRIO kept posting error messages

[Greg McKaskle]

Make sure you are using the orange cross over cable. What are do the error messages.

Greg McKaskle

[gokul]

Originally Posted by fordchrist675

The CRIO kept posting error messages

It will help if we know what these error messages are.

1. Use the Orange Crossover cable with the camera.
2. Make sure the camera is set correctly (Brightness = 40, Light settings = Flourescent 1) using the Axis instructions after connecting the Cam to your PC. Make sure you hit "Save" after the changes to the cam.
3. Make sure that the Green/Pink is the right way up as the program expects it - in the program (C/C++) there is a setting for ABOVE and BELOW. If the colors are reversed to what the program expects it won't find it.
4. Make sure that the cam is receiving signal by watching for the Green light around the lens.
5. Make sure your target is not too close or too bright.
6. For the C/C++ code, teams will have to play around a bit with cam settings and HSL values to make sure everything works.
7. The C/C++ code is based on SimpleRobot so once it is out of Autonomous, it won't go back to Auto even if you flip the DS Auto/Tele Switch - you will have reboot the cRIO with the Autonomous enabled on the DS.

[aerophd2001]

One thing that may solve many peoples problems:

>> Test the two-color tracking routines in a room WITHOUT windows <<

Daylight coming in from outside *can* change the color of the targets from the camera's perspective. You will want to test in a room with only fluorescent lighting.

Additionally, you will want to have equal lighting on the target from all directions (no shadows around the periphery of the target).

I hope these tips help.