Connecting Axis camera to cRIO

[laultima]

We've been having problems getting video data from the Axis camera. Weve set the user and password to FRC, connected with the crossover cable, and tried setting the IP on the camera to both dynamic and static 192.168.0.90, but to no avail. We loaded the DashboardDemo program from Windriver to the cRIO and launched a dashboard from LabView, and all we get on dashboard is the field state and battery voltage.

[kyungjin]

I'm in pretty much the same predicament as you. So far, we can only get the camera working when its directly plugged into the PC via direct crossover connection (in both NI Vision Assistant and live camera setup). Whenever we plug into the cRIO, the camera isn't recognized by the VA (we get a "Check IP/Cable" error message).

Aside from that, does anyone know how to program the camera to track certain colors or geometric shapes? We're using WindRiver to program using C++ and I can't find a program that will allow us to easily configure the colors and the shapes of the "blobs" we want to track. So I guess simply put, my question is... What program do we use to configure the camera and how will I be able to implement it into my source code?

[legend]

Did you try reseting the camera to factory defaults? Try that out, and when asked for a username and password use root/pass.

[laultima]

The camera was reset to defaults today, with the 2 accounts and passwords on it being root/admin and FRC/FRC respectively, does it need the root password to be "pass"?

[whitetiger0990]

You should hook it to your computer and run Setup Axis Camera. It'll prepare it for you to hook to your cRIO. Past that, I'm really not sure. We use LabVIEW though. We were able to put it on the same subnet as the laptop and then run that utility, plug it into the cRIO and it worked nicely.

[kyungjin]

I can run the Setup Axis Camera when the camera is directly connected to the computer. It just doesn't like to play nice with the cRIO when connected... I can't get anything to work when it's plugged into the second ethernet port on the cRIO.

[laultima]

Weve also successfully run the Setup Axis Camera utility, but it still wont work with the cRIO. Im not sure, but I think the only thing that utility does is to add the FRC username to the camera.

[kyungjin]

Originally Posted by laultima

Weve also successfully run the Setup Axis Camera utility, but it still wont work with the cRIO. Im not sure, but I think the only thing that utility does is to add the FRC username to the camera.

Really? We had to do that ourselves to get the program running. We're still not sure how it "sets-up" the camera in the first place...

[Greg McKaskle]

The Camera setup utility uses the http requests on the camera to automate adding an account that the rest of the library can then use.

Creating an account by hand name:FRC and password:FRC would be equivalent. Without this, the first time you connect to the camera via web server, it will prompt to set the root accounts password, and since most will type in something different to the single account on the camera, the robot SW would then need to know your password, know how to encrypt, etc.

The FRC, FRC should allow your code to access the camera.

To see if the camera is working, I'd start with the single color vision example, but modify it to print the size of the particle, then widen the hue and saturation and luminance pretty far out if you need to. If you are getting something other than zero, the camera is working.

Greg McKaskle

[kyungjin]

Right now though... We can't even configure the camera to play with the cRIO. Everytime we connect it, we can never establish any connection via NI Vision Assistant or any other programs to get live feed data from the camera. As for the creating the account, we've already set the camera to have an account called FRC with a password of FRC so I think we've been able to pass that... As for the Camera Setup Utility, we've successfully ran that too when the camera is directly connected to the computer via Xover cable.

The problem for us though is that the camera isn't accessible when it's connected to the cRIO. Any ideas on how I can configure the camera or my PC so I can get data from the camera?

By the way... As a side question... I'm using WindRiver... Am I still using NI Vision Assistant to configure the camera to track colors/shapes/etc. or is there another program that is going to manage that? Right now... These two problems are giving me a major migrain...

[omalleyj]

kyungjin:
I am using the VisionDemo that came with the example code for WindRiver and it tracks a red object (Santa Hat ) without any trouble.
Try using that and see if it works for you. All you need to do is create a new project from example code. There is an enum with several colors and luminance values predefined in one of the headers. Going through the example code should tell you what you need to know.

laultima:
It (the demo) is not sending actual video frames anywhere, just analyzing them, but this would tell you if the firmware recognizes and controls the camera properly.

hth
good luck!
Jim

[kyungjin]

I believe I've tried this and it didn't work... Is your camera recognized by NI Vision Assistant? I guess a better question would be whether NI VA is needed at all? Right now... I don't think the camera is being recognized at all... How do you know if you're camera has been configured correctly and how will you be able to determine the colors/shapes that you want to recognize in the game?

[omalleyj]

I have not used the Vision Assistant.
I setup the vision demo in WindRiver, changed the debug flag to output to the console, built and loaded it. Flip the DS switch to autonomous and the output is visible in the console. I have a laptop connected directly to the serial port and if there is a red object in the camera's field it give the XY coordinates. When a pan/tilt servo is connected to the PWM 3 & 4 it moves the camera to track the object. I did need to fiddle with the tracking a little, the tilt was inverted, but otherwise it works out of the box.

Also, make sure your camera is focused by connecting directly to a PC. Ours was very out of focus as received, that might be messing some people up.

[kyungjin]

When you said that you output directly to the console... Does the console mean the DSU screen or a console window is WindRiver?

Also, can I ask how your network has been set up? Mine is:

PC -> DSU -> Router ~> Wireless Adapter -> cRIO ePort 1
cRIO ePort2 => Camera

Where -> is a regular ethernet connection...
~> is a wireless connection...
=> is a crossover connection...

[Jill]

I'm having the same problem.

The camera is connected via crossover cable to the cRIO. It's in a wireless configuration, and I can "ping" the first cRIO port, 10.21.97.2, but not the second one, 192.168.0.3, which is the problem. (When the camera is hooked directly to my computer, I can see a live feed, but when I do that, the static IP address has to be different.)

Is there a setting on my computer that's wrong? Right now, I have it set to a static IP of 10.21.97.6.