Camera Auto Tracking?

[Ryan Cumings]

We got the camera setup and calibrated using the GUI. Is there a way to test the tracking of the target using the GUI? We have the pan and tilt servo motors hooked up.

[Zalumaskov]

once you have taken a frame you and have selected a color to track go to the servo tab and enable auto servo mode. Now when you go to the color tab and track, your servo should follow that color.

I also have another question to add about auto servo mode in the GUI. Does it work with pan only? I'm sure I have both servos in the right places (Servo0(pan),Servo1(tilt))?

[MichaelGoldfarb]

Originally Posted by Zalumaskov

once you have taken a frame you and have selected a color to track go to the servo tab and enable auto servo mode. Now when you go to the color tab and track, your servo should follow that color.

I also have another question to add about auto servo mode in the GUI. Does it work with pan only? I'm sure I have both servos in the right places (Servo0(pan),Servo1(tilt))?

We've been working w/ that GUI and frankly it's worthless. When auto servo is set the servos will not respond. However we were able to get it working from a terminal interface. Look at the documentation for all the commands it pretty easy even w/o the GUI.

[Dave Flowerday]

Originally Posted by Zalumaskov

Does it work with pan only? I'm sure I have both servos in the right places (Servo0(pan),Servo1(tilt))?

Yes, that is what we have observed. The GUI only enables the pan servo. I recommend getting the camera hooked up to your RC as soon as possible and use the IFI-supplied camera code. The GUI provided is seriously lacking in quality.

[MichaelGoldfarb]

Originally Posted by Dave Flowerday

Yes, that is what we have observed. The GUI only enables the pan servo. I recommend getting the camera hooked up to your RC as soon as possible and use the IFI-supplied camera code. The GUI provided is seriously lacking in quality.

We've had some problems w/ the GUI that First supplied. It was unable to control the servos when you set them to auto. However it seems to work great when you configure the camera through the command terminal.

[Mike Soukup]

Originally Posted by Dave Flowerday

Yes, that is what we have observed. The GUI only enables the pan servo. I recommend getting the camera hooked up to your RC as soon as possible and use the IFI-supplied camera code. The GUI provided is seriously lacking in quality.

To add to what Dave said, the config parameters that the camera takes, step size being one of them, are almost perfect in the IFI supplied RC code. When we hooked the camera up to our 2004 bot we expected to do a lot of tweaking, but what they gave us works pretty darn well. Almost out of the box we were able to drive towards a vision tetra and with a few more lines of code were able to stop when we got close to it. Hook it up to the RC and start playing around, it's easier than you probably think.

[russell]

I got our camera working on our 04 bot yesterday, but the bot was getting absolutely no traction on the floor in our shop, so it would try to correct but keep skidding the wrong way, so it would way over correct then the wheels would catch and it would swerve violently the other way. I think I got a program fix for this but we will see today. And today we should get electronics on the kitbot so we can play with taht while build team builds our real bot.

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by russell

I got our camera working on our 04 bot yesterday, but the bot was getting absolutely no traction on the floor in our shop, so it would try to correct but keep skidding the wrong way...

Our kitbot testbed is put together with two-wheel drive. It was uncontrollably "skiddy", especially with the single joystick code. So we just added a bunch of ballast, and now it drives like a dream.

Our next hurdle is color calibration. Getting the right color vision targets and sufficient light on the practice field is proving to be a challenge at the moment.

[Chris_Elston]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

It was uncontrollably "skiddy", especially with the single joystick code. So we just added a bunch of ballast, and now it drives like a dream.

Geez...we are fighting the same thing. "Oversteer". Our test bot looks like it's got a BAC of 1.1% driving toward the tetra... What did you try and do to ballast the robot oversteer? We've added some EXP joystick code, lowered the max output of the PWM to like 145 forward, and played with the varible "steer_comp"...but it's still seems uncontrollably wacky or drunk...Any idea you can share?

[russell]

Well I just got our robot working absolutely great, just by modifying the code. I dont have it right here with me, but basicaly what I did is I took that value for the pan servo, and instead of using that exact value to steer the robot, I made it into an int variable, then subtracted 127 from it, divided that value by three, then added 127, and used that value to steer the robot. Basically any time the robot goes to steer it only steers one third as sharp as the default code would make it do. The best part is that if your servo doesnt center exactly, then by changing the value of that 127 that you add back on to the value that does center the servo then you can correct for that. You can also change that 3 to make it more or less sensitive. You might also want to play with speed. The camera works bette if the bot goes slower.