Camera Problems

[pickle]

Alright, I'm about to go insane, I really need help. I'm trying to calibrate the camera, per the instructions provided, and I think I've followed them as exactly as I can, but I can't get the camera to see anything by yellow when calibrating for that color. Here's a picture of the red target:



Do you see anything in that image that would make it not be able to find the obvious red target? Its lined up, and the camera 3 ft off the ground as the instructions say. I'm completely out of ideas, can anyone help?

[Joe Ross]

The lighting seems very poor. Have you tried it in a more well lit area?

[Greg Ross]

Originally Posted by Joe Ross

The lighting seems very poor. Have you tried it in a more well lit area?

I imagine it could be being confused by the strong backlighting.

[CJO]

Yeah, the sheets in the background are a tempting white target.

[pickle]

Well, the sheets are out of the target mostly I think, but ya, tomorrow we'll try covering those cabinets with something else (they are orange, and show up the same color as the targer on the camera). As far as lighting, its just in like a classroom kind of thing, I don't really know what else to do for that, we're gonna try some other things too. I'll let you know if I get it, assuming my head doesn't go through a wall.... this has been 2 days straight of this.............

And just curious, when we hit a color, we get the error "Tracking packet failed" in the little statusbar window of the GUI, where you see the messages about the camera, is this normal? Or could this be a part of the problem, I kind of forgot to mention that...

[rappo]

you might also want to use a more "rare" color. like, something bright and neon-esque. we used a very bright shade of blue (like on photoshop it would have great saturation, if that helps you imagine it better) and it found it just fine even while other team members standing around with the colors on their shirts and what not.

[Mike Betts]

Originally Posted by pickle

Well, the sheets are out of the target mostly I think, but ya, tomorrow we'll try covering those cabinets with something else (they are orange, and show up the same color as the targer on the camera). As far as lighting, its just in like a classroom kind of thing, I don't really know what else to do for that, we're gonna try some other things too. I'll let you know if I get it, assuming my head doesn't go through a wall.... this has been 2 days straight of this.............

And just curious, when we hit a color, we get the error "Tracking packet failed" in the little statusbar window of the GUI, where you see the messages about the camera, is this normal? Or could this be a part of the problem, I kind of forgot to mention that...

Jeremy,

The instructions in START HERE are very specific. You must be on a dark floor resembling the field that FIRST will be using. In their example, there is no bright background. Neither should you have a bright background...

[Phil Roth]

Originally Posted by pickle

Well, the sheets are out of the target mostly I think, but ya, tomorrow we'll try covering those cabinets with something else (they are orange, and show up the same color as the targer on the camera). As far as lighting, its just in like a classroom kind of thing, I don't really know what else to do for that, we're gonna try some other things too. I'll let you know if I get it, assuming my head doesn't go through a wall.... this has been 2 days straight of this.............

And just curious, when we hit a color, we get the error "Tracking packet failed" in the little statusbar window of the GUI, where you see the messages about the camera, is this normal? Or could this be a part of the problem, I kind of forgot to mention that...

We just fired up the camera tonight and basically got the same "Tracking packet failed". After reading the manual on the commands for the camera, I went into Hyperterminal and setup the camera to track all colors with no problem. I'm convinced the GUI screws up on certain PCs, probably the serial driver. I'm running a P4m @ 2.8Ghz and can't get it to run. Here's what I did to prove the camera tracked OK.

1. Setup camera playing field. Enter GUI and grab a frame.
2. Then hover the mouse over the triangle and left click on the field's triange on the screen. If the triangle looks highlighted ok, then record the RGB values that are shown.
3. Close the GUI and open Hyperterminal ( keep power on the camera). setup for COM1 @ 115200, 8, n, 1
4. Type <ret> and make sure you get an ACK
4. Type SM 15 <ret> to enable auto tracking of servos
5. Type TC Rmin Rmax Gmin Gmax Bmin Bmax.. where
Rmin = Your R value -25
Rmax = Your R value +25
Gmin = Your G value -25
Gmax = Your G value +25
Bmin = Your B value -25
Bmax = Your B value +25

Your camera should now be tracking.... At least now I know the GUI is screwed up and I'm not going nuts

[Joe Ross]

The white sheets are reflecting a lot of light. Even if they are "out of target" they appear to be messing up the lighting balance.

[Mr. Lim]

Originally Posted by pickle

Alright, I'm about to go insane, I really need help. I'm trying to calibrate the camera, per the instructions provided, and I think I've followed them as exactly as I can, but I can't get the camera to see anything by yellow when calibrating for that color. Here's a picture of the red target:



Do you see anything in that image that would make it not be able to find the obvious red target? Its lined up, and the camera 3 ft off the ground as the instructions say. I'm completely out of ideas, can anyone help?

1) Lighting is extremely important as others have stated. In your picture, the automatic exposure control is adjusting based on the brightest spot in your frame, which are the white sheets. I'm guessing they are very bright (reflecting the lights in the room), and so the camera is under exposing the important parts of the frame (the red triangle).

2) If you have no control over lighting, the next best thing is to skip the calibration process altogether, and manually enter numbers in the text fields beside the calibrate buttons. If you want some numbers to start with:

Yellow = 36
Green = 44
Red = 90

we got these values working in a large highschool cafeteria with fluorescent lights covered with dingy yellow covers.

Once you enter these values, click on the "Color" tab, then click Track [Color], and see how it looks. If you only see small patches of your triangle, increase the number for that color. If you're picking up areas of color from the surrounding area, then drop it down.

Good luck!

-SlimBoJones...

[pickle]

THanks, we're gonna get more black paper (the place that had it was closed last night) and use that to cover some places, and see how that works out, otherwise, I'll try Phil's code. Thanks alot

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Remember in this camera system, the color white is composed of mostly green (59%)some red(31%) and a little blue(11%). If you were to look at the histogram output, you would see that the sheets are producing as much or more red output than the triangle. In addition, there is so much light reflected that the camera is in overload. Try shutting off the lights over the sheets and things should improve.

[Phil Roth]

Originally Posted by pickle

Alright, I'm about to go insane, I really need help. I'm trying to calibrate the camera, per the instructions provided, and I think I've followed them as exactly as I can, but I can't get the camera to see anything by yellow when calibrating for that color. Here's a picture of the red target:



Do you see anything in that image that would make it not be able to find the obvious red target? Its lined up, and the camera 3 ft off the ground as the instructions say. I'm completely out of ideas, can anyone help?

Pickle,
I set up a "test bed' with ideal conditions, a black sheet and mini triangles placed about 3 feet away from the camera to really get a good understanding of what's going on and how all the camera parameters work. The GUI stores "tuned" RGB values for FIRST's selected colors in config.txt in the .java folder. You might want to just highlight the triangle in the frame grab window and make sure the RGB values displayed next to the grab fall within range of the parameters for that particular color in config.txt. If not, your colors and/or lighting may be off. You might want to alter the values in config.txt to get it going.

After getting a firm understanding on how this thing finally works and how to tune it, I'm really concerned about how well everything will work as a "system" on the field dealing with variations in lighting and the field. I wonder if FIRST will allow us to read the mean values off the real targets before the competitions. I can see it now.....tee shirts with 120 255 0 20 25 300.... written all over them.

Good Luck. Let me know if I can help.

[pickle]

Well, we covered the white with some black sheets, and then we did some other stuff to add more dark, and we got 3 values, but it seems that that made things worse, it couldn't track any colors with them.... Before calibration, we used hyper terminal to get the servo to follow green, and after, it wouldn't follow anything. I'm really not liking this camera. I'm just going to assume that treacking green will be the most useful thing, since the vision tetras are green. Otherwise, I'll set up something to get it all working using the manual method suggested earlier. Consider that image obsolete, there is no more glare, and no more black in the image. When we select the red triangle, its the only thing within the threshhold of 25 that gets selected in the image. *shrugs* Same story with green and yellow, however, I know green works, because I got it to track it. So ya

[russell]

I am thinking that at the competition couldnt they just post the numbers for all the teams? Or does the effect of the numbers vary between cameras?