Team 766 Robot *On-board* Video

[octothorpe]

Thanks for the compliments, everyone! Glad you all enjoyed the videos.

For those who said they wanted to do it themselves, go ahead. The camera is an Aiptek IS-DV2 that we bought at Target for ~$100; it retails on Amazon for $88. Takes 30fps VGA video, records to an SD card, has USB port, uses AAs. The bottom has a tripod mount that fits a standard bolt (don't know which off the top of my head) but you'll want a little more of a mounting than that. Feel free to post/PM if you have more questions.

Originally Posted by 1359th Scalawag

It's amazing Match 10 and match 6 show some pretty great views of our robot! A pretty cool different perspective. Amazing videos! Are you going to get the Elimination matches up soon? And Did you have the robo-cam up in our match against you that was 50-51? I would love to see that match from that perspective!

Yeah, wild perspective, huh? 1359 was awesome at Davis; the shrunken head on the cart was very impressive. Unfortunately we don't have the second QF match – robocam batteries died – but we do have QF 1 and we have the 50-51 match (so close!). Right now the bandwidth on the Vimeo account is full, but I'll try to post the remaining five (Matches 43, 48, 54, 63, and QF 4.1) within a week.

Originally Posted by Jeffrafa

We have done the same thing at one regional last year and all of this year, only ours is a Oregon Scientific video camera advertised as a helmet cam. Last year we ran it on its own batteries, which is technically illegal, but the head inspector let us run with it since it had absolutely no impact on anything else about the robot and offered no advantage.

This year, to avoid any potential conflict, we ran wires into it and powered it on a 5v line supplied from the RC - which makes it entirely legit. The head inspector hassled us about it in Vegas, and feverishly looked for a rule that would disqualify it, but in the end he didn't find any legitimate grounds for removal of the device.

-Jeff

Yes, the camera's always been a bit of a contentious issue with the inspectors. The device is powered separately, by two AA NiMH rechargeables. However, so far we've had relatively lenient inspectors who let it slide because it's not affecting the action of the robot and it's not transmitting any video signal (not like it could). The robocam did go flying off when we tipped over at SVR, but it survived the fall largely undamaged, so at Davis we supplemented the mounting with zip ties and velcro and this satisfied the inspectors.

It's all in good fun anyway.

[octothorpe]

Okay, a new week, a new bandwidth allotment. Here are the last five robocam videos from Davis:

http://www.vimeo.com/user:160412/clips

For reference, the new videos are matches 43, 48, 54, and 63 of the qualifiers, and match 4-1 of the quarterfinals. Teams featured by number: 115, 295, 675, 692, 973, 1072, 1280, 1351, 1359, 1458, 1560, 1671, 1678, 2035, 2063, 2073, 2085, 2189. This list is in addition to the list in my initial post – several teams make appearances in both sets of videos. You can find the videos with your team's robot by doing a search for your team number, since all the clips have been tagged.

Good luck to all the teams competing at Championships – I wish Team 766 could go and take more videos of all the action. Also, I want to congratulate all the rookie teams at Davis this year. It's been great to see so many of you out there, and performing (by and large) very well.

[Ryan Albright]

Originally Posted by octothorpe

Okay, a new week, a new bandwidth allotment.

Hey if you need some space and bandwidth PM me. I have a website that I am building that is off line so my bandwidth is going to waste

[Qbranch]

Here's an idea... why not have FIRST issue each team a wireless video camera (802.11 or other network to allow multiple cameras) thats required to be on the robot, so that during the match the TV people can put robot-eye-view up on the main monitor or on the webcast .... something like NASCAR?

"Aaand here's the in-car video from the blue alliance.... "....

-q

[1359th Scalawag]

Originally Posted by Qbranch

Here's an idea... why not have FIRST issue each team a wireless video camera (802.11 or other network to allow multiple cameras) thats required to be on the robot, so that during the match the TV people can put robot-eye-view up on the main monitor or on the webcast .... something like NASCAR?

"Aaand here's the in-car video from the blue alliance.... "....

-q

That's a really cool idea! It would be nice to see it happen someday.

About match 43, really close match. I didn't notice your alliance's technical problems before. You can see, right before your robot's gripper breaks and you drop the tube, our robot stops turning properly. Later in the match, you can see our robot somehow limping closer to the ramp. It was a very close match and I'm looking forward to eventually seeing it more clearly in the official videos.

[Zyik]

Watch 48, 973 doesnt move, reason: the rampbot deployed before letting us out. Therefore, we got stuck under it. In our attempts to get away we moved the ramp out of the home zone, netting us a penalty that tied the match. WE don't know if that was the exact penatly or if the rampbot caused it by landing on us. Either way, that match should have been a win. Instead, we ended up with a damaged robot. Very annoying.

Great video though!

[octothorpe]

Originally Posted by 1359th Scalawag

That's a really cool idea! It would be nice to see it happen someday.

Yeah, it is a cool idea, but that'd probably be another $200 going into the KOP cost. And unless you made it mandatory, most teams probably wouldn't bother, so it'd be about as useful as the $200 compressor is to all the non-pneumatic-using teams.

Scalawags, match 43 was definitely a close match, but we were defeated fair and square (can't say quite the same for our first quarterfinal...). I didn't notice your mechanical problems either, which is the flaw of the robocam videos – you can only really focus on whatever the robot is pointed towards.

Zyik, I'd forgotten how your robot got pinned by 1678, that's really tough luck. The match 48 summary's been updated to reflect that, so that people won't wonder where your robot is... At least we netted a tie instead of a loss, but that certainly is frustrating.

[1359th Scalawag]

The thing I would like about a roboCam would be that we could make a really great video with it. You guys could make a video with all the times you scored set up one after another. It would be a pretty impressive video to show to your sponsors!

[octothorpe]

Yeah, with some decent editing you could definitely make a memorable video. Last year the official 766 student videographer expressed interest in this kind of footage, but lately he's been too busy to do much related to multimedia any more. Perhaps if I have spare time over the summer I can try to cobble some sort of clip-compilation video together – it would certainly be a good PR tool. Thanks for the idea.