Autonomous Target Tracking at Regionals

[PhilBot]

I'm at my witts end with trying to get my auto code running this year. I'm trying to find the "silver bullet" that will explain what I'm not seeing this year.

Background...

We had great auto modes last year. Dependable target tracking etc. We avoided the pan-tilt unit and just scanned our robot directly.

This year, we have several auto-ringer placing auto modes, that all work great at our home facillity and at the regional practice fields, but we can't get any joy on the actual playing field. The bot just DOES NOT see the lamps.

We had the problem at Pittsburgh and now again at the Chesapeake regional. I polled some of the other teams and many of the teams that are trying to get auto mode working are having the same trouble. Good on practice, bad on real field.

I started suspecting that the Rack's lamp power supply wasn't able to drive all four lamps. This would explain why single lamp test racks all seemed to work. I raised this possiblity at the Chesapeake regional and I was shown the camera verification setup they use to ensure that the arena lamps are all working properly.

They use the Labview GUI to load the "default" settings and show the tracking numbers. It looked fine.

I verified that my camera.h file data was the same & matched the on-screen numbers. (I'm using the streamlined 2.1 camera code.)


At this point I'm convinced that there is some subtle difference between the GUI program (which works fine) and the camera.c/h code (that hardly anyone can get working on a real playing field). (something like a flag that only has an effect in a really bright environment)

I even spoke to Dave Lavery on the sidelines today, but he re-affirmed that everything sould be fine.

Ask yourself... how many relaible auto-modes have you seen this year (compared to last year)... There was maybe two at pittsburgh and none so far at Annapolis....

In my case the camera initializes fine. but does not show any targets with any non-zero confidence levels despite how close I get to the spiders... (Unlike in the pits where I get a great target)

Any brainstorms...

I've attached my .h file.. I've tried filtering on/off to no avail.
Unfortunatly we can't get on the field with a computer attached...

Phil