Testing Vision Tracking w/ Webcam?

[ntm739182]

Hey guys, as I'm sure many of you have been doing, I've been looking around for information about vision tracking for our robot. I've found some pretty decent stuff, but I'm having a pretty major problem. I can only test live video from the robot's axis camera, which I don't have access to most of the time. Due to this, I can't test my programs until I'm actually at a team meeting, which is seriously delaying my progress. Does anybody know how to utilize the webcam (either built-in or USB) in LabVIEW? If I could capture a live stream coming from my webcam, then I could test and revise my programs from home, and not worry about spending all of my time at meetings on this one thing. If there are plugins I need, or if it's simply impossible, I'd like to know either way, so please feel free to be blunt.
Any solutions to this matter would be GREATLY appreciated! =D

[jwakeman]

I am testing at home using the camera with no cRIO/robot. I just connected the webcam directly to my pc with a xover cable. Then I was able to run the example rectangle detecting example in labview.

[ntm739182]

I understand that you could use the axis camera without the robot, my problem is that I don't have an axis camera at home... Our axis camera is team property and I wouldn't feel comfortable taking that home because I live about a half an hour away from where our team meets. In addition to that, I think it'd be nice to have a function so that in future projects, I wouldn't have to rely on having access to some camera that isn't mine.
Please, if ANYONE knows a way to capture live webcam feed that can be wired into other functions, please let me know! =D

[Greg McKaskle]

What I'd suggest is setting up a bit of field and saving a few dozen images into a folder. Keep pretty good notes of how they were taken and where the camera was (height, distance, etc.) You may also find it useful to have a tape measure in the images.

Then your image processing can be carried out on the folder of images. Vision Assistant makes it easy to do this. It is also easy to build a program that calls your image processing VI, passing in the one from the camera or file, depending on the circumstance.

Greg McKaskle

[wilsonmw04]

greetings,

Finally got the camera working after the update. I can see a live feed of the camera but I can't seem to save any of these images to start testing the tracking feature. Where does the assistant save the images by default?

[Greg McKaskle]

When I hit the save button in vision assistant, it starts at the computer drive list. So, it doesn't have much of a default and depended on the user to pick a directory.

Greg McKaskle

[wilsonmw04]

that's what I thought, but when I save it to the desktop the files aren't there. Also I have tried to "save to browser" with no success. I must be doing something wrong...