Camera tracking other lights

[Bharat Nain]

The camera always successfully tracks the green light which is on a fully charged battery. However, we have sunroofs on the top of our gym and the camera detects the light from there also when the sun is right above. I have tried changing the saturation levels but that doesn't help. It seems like the light from the sunroof has more green in it than the green light itself. Any ideas?

[Alan Anderson]

Sunlight is powerful stuff, and you probably can't overcome the issue with programming. About the only thing I can suggest is a sun visor or a green filter on the lens to keep the camera from being overwhelmed by the broad-spectrum light from overhead.

[petek]

Do the skylights show up when you look at the Tracking Frame with the LabView GUI? If so, is it possible to limit the camera's field of view (with a mask or tilt limit) so it doesn't see them?

Things I've seen happen with bright interfering light sources are:
- If the interfering light is very bright and near the line of sight between the camera and the target light, or it reflects off the face of the target light, it can swamp the target out, even if it doesn't contain the target color.
- If the interfering light is broad-spectrum white light (which sunlight is), it will contain the green we're looking for and, if it is bright enough, the camera may see it as a valid target. It has to be really bright, though.

I've got a camera looking out the window at bright sunny (& snow covered) scene right now. Using the 2006 Target.cfg config, with the Noise Filter set to 1, it isn't picking up anything at all. However, if I set the Noise Filter to 0, the camera picks up the light off reflective surfaces, like a shiny car parked outside. Reducing the Saturation Control to 120 (from 128) eliminated them.

[Bharat Nain]

Originally Posted by petek

Do the skylights show up when you look at the Tracking Frame with the LabView GUI? If so, is it possible to limit the camera's field of view (with a mask or tilt limit) so it doesn't see them?

Things I've seen happen with bright interfering light sources are:
- If the interfering light is very bright and near the line of sight between the camera and the target light, or it reflects off the face of the target light, it can swamp the target out, even if it doesn't contain the target color.
- If the interfering light is broad-spectrum white light (which sunlight is), it will contain the green we're looking for and, if it is bright enough, the camera may see it as a valid target. It has to be really bright, though.

I've got a camera looking out the window at bright sunny (& snow covered) scene right now. Using the 2006 Target.cfg config, with the Noise Filter set to 1, it isn't picking up anything at all. However, if I set the Noise Filter to 0, the camera picks up the light off reflective surfaces, like a shiny car parked outside. Reducing the Saturation Control to 120 (from 128) eliminated them.

I think our best bet is to get up over the roof and cover those openings. The light is right above our rack so there really is no way to block it out. We played with the camera settings quite a bit and nothing really helped. I thought about a visor or filter, but I am not sure how to fix it on the camera. It might be more trouble than just letting the camera see the light for a couple hours. Thanks for the suggestions.

[whlspacedude]

We are having that problem with regular lights the camera tracks all of the lights within its viewing area including the green lights

[Bharat Nain]

Originally Posted by whlspacedude

We are having that problem with regular lights the camera tracks all of the lights within its viewing area including the green lights

If its just the lights in a shop, then you can adjust the saturation and noise filter and most likely it will be fixed. Look at petek's post.

[gnirts]

Are there any severe performance side effects with with a noise filter of 1 or 2? If no, why does the camera code change them from the default of 2 and set them to 0?

Thanks in advance,
Robinson

[Teammax]

I think we are having the same type of problem. When we use our camera at our school it works great and we can score in autonomous. When we went to the Winter War Zone Scrimmage we had many tracking issues.

How do we know what our noise filter is set to and could someone tell where to look in the code to change it. Please.

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by Teammax

How do we know what our noise filter is set to and could someone tell where to look in the code to change it. Please.

If you're using the "Bells & Whistles" camera code, you can change it from the built-in menu facility by connecting a terminal to the robot's program port and typing "c" to access the camera menu.

The IFI Loader program contains a built-in terminal program which activates automatically after downloading a program to the robot. You can also activate it manually from the Option menu.

[Teammax]

Thanks I think I have found it