LABVIEW camera tracking

[yelk11]

I am completely new to labview so could somone help me. my team has entrusted me to make the camera work. i don't know how. i don't know how to use the block diagrams but i do know about wiring.
Please Help,

[Alan Anderson]

Use the NI Vision Assistant program to learn about (and play around with) image processing and feature recognition.

Read Greg McKaskle's helpful 2012 Vision Target White Paper.

There are built-in examples in LabVIEW for FRC that show you how to add vision processing to your robot project.

[Aur0r4]

Yelk11,

You've picked a great tool to work with!

After you use the "Simulate Aquisition" step to load some images into the software from a folder (you can't acquire live from the Axis camera, although many Firewire cameras will work), you will want to follow this general approach:

Filter to get rid of unnecessary data:

Use the RBG or HSL (or others) in the Color Threshold tool to filter out everything except the target. This works as a software filter, same as a physical filter. We could get just the target frame to exist in the image, and everything else is black. Using a "Lookup Table" with the "equalizer" will convert the result to an 8-bit B/W image. This gives you substantially less data to process

Get geometry:

Use the "Find pattern", "edge finding", or other tools to locate geometry of interest, whether its just finding the center of the target or measuring its dimensions. Use coordinate systems on those features along with the measurement tools to get the information you want.

There are many approaches, and definitely research machine vision documents online, particularly on NI's website. They've developed some great stuff. The Vision Assistant is designed to help you develop an algorithm, and our programmers tell me that just about anything you can do in LabVIEW you can convert to code. I assume its magic. Code and I don't mix....

I am by no means an expert, but we've gotten some great results using this general outline.

[Prototype151]

Fortunately, Labview comes with many premade examples which includes programs to run the camera tracking system with the servos you have. You will need to wire the servos and the the camera accordingly to use these programs!
Hope I helped.

[DavidGitz]

Originally Posted by Aur0r4

(you can't acquire live from the Axis camera,

Yes you can, and it's quite easy. After configuring your Axis Camera using the "Setup Axis Camera" tool power the camera appropriately and connect it to your computer using a crossover cable (or leave it connected to your radio and plug your computer into the radio. Or use the wireless). Next, change your computer's IP address as appropriate so that you can access the camera's webserver from your computer. Then in NI Vision Assistant click File>Acquire Image, then click "Acquire Image (Axis IP) and change the IP address to match the IP address of your Camera and click Close. Voila.

[Aur0r4]

Ah, thanks David!

We had been fighting this in DAQmx trying to create a custom instrument. Guess we made it harder than it had to be... I had assumed that since the only option not grayed out in the Vision assistant was the "Simulate Acquisition" that the functionality wasn't there unless DAQmx was happy.

[DavidGitz]

No problem, glad you got it to work!