Need Help: FRC Labview with local USB-cam (or laptop Webcam)

[Vikesrock]

Is the Axis Camera the desired team resource or is the cRIO? I would recommend using the Axis camera if possible as (baring changes to the kit electronics) is the camera you actually want to be developing for.

The Axis camera can be connected directly to a computer via an ethernet cable and then be used with the Vision Assistant. You can also develop a Labview app for the desktop and interact with the camera using the provided FRC libraries. As Greg mentioned errors may appear on occasion, but they do not affect the functioning of the program.

[Ziaholic]

I almost went down that path ... I have the Axis camera at my house, and could've re-configured it to work on my home LAN.

It just seemed silly to be on my laptop in the living room, playing with a camera that was hooked to a 100' ethernet cable that snaked back into my home office. ... especially since I was staring at a camera right there in my laptop lid. (and not having the Axis power cord was another reason to try to get my webcam working)

I understand the desire to develop the apps using the same camera we'd use in competition, but I figured that I could still investigate various hi-level methods with any camera, then fine-tune those methods once I was back running on the 'bot.

This all becomes moot in a few days, when I get my team's controller for the next few weeks. If I still don't have a USB solution working when I give back the cRio, I'll simply setup the Axis cam to work on my home network.


[edit] If I had the Axis power cord, I would've tried plugging it into my home router and reconfiguring it ... I didn't know that it'd work by plugging directly into my Laptop's RJ45. I just assumed I had to plug it into my home router. My laptop's RJ45 is inactive 99.99% of the time, I could reconfigure it to some dummy IP range without affecting it's wireless surfing etc. This sounds like a very feasible option. Thanks for the tip.