Camera and driver station

FIRST General Forum
1

I have searched the fourms but i have not been able to find anything. Also i have read the rules and i can not find anything. I remember reading somewhere that you could not have a live feed from your camera to your driver station. Is this true?

Thanks,
2240 Robotics

Edit: also we were thinking about using a laptop to display thine image.

2

All communication except for the protocol between the driver station and the robot will be blocked by the routers. You can “have” a live feed being sent from the robot, but the routers will block it from ever reaching your laptop.

If you can manage to fit the image data in the rather small number of “user bytes” sent to the driver station, it’s fair game. Otherwise, sorry to say, it won’t really work out.

3

Thanks… thats to bad our idea wont work :frowning:

4

All communication except for the protocol between the driver station and the robot will be blocked by the routers. You can “have” a live feed being sent from the robot, but the routers will block it from ever reaching your laptop.

If you can manage to fit the image data in the rather small number of “user bytes” sent to the driver station, it’s fair game. Otherwise, sorry to say, it won’t really work out.

That’s not what I’ve heard or read (cannot verify though).

I remember being distinctively told that you could send video, but they’re restricting the bandwidth so much that it will be useless for teams to use.

5

The exact answer can be found in Team Update #5:

Every time the Driver Station and ROBOT communicate, a 1024-byte packet is sent
between them. 40 bytes are reserved for use by the Field Management System. The
remaining 984 bytes are available for teams to put in any of the user data that they
want. The team can choose to send whatever they want in those 984 bytes.

Video is typically transmitted from the ROBOT by using the software ports
specifically set up to support video throughput. This year, the Field Management
System will not pass data sent through that port during a match (to ensure adequate
system performance during competition events, until the new system is better
characterized in actual competition settings). If a team really wants to transmit
images from the camera back to the Driver Station during a competition, they can
decompose the video frame and pass it as user data in the available 984 bytes per
packet. However, the resulting throughput of the video will likely result in a frame rate
so slow that it is not particularly useful.

Emphasis is my own.

6

Out of curiosity, what needs you to be able to see through the camera, when you can just look at the field itself? Personally, I cant think of any application where i’d rather look at a microscopic image above the real thing.

7

There few applications where the turret operator will be better looking at the camera, or some other data you can pass on the screen with the image…

8

Thsnts what we are using it for :slight_smile:

9

There are a lot of cases in which the view from the alliance base can be obscured when you don’t want it to be(i.e. lining up to dump into someone’s trailer). Although in cases like these, its often better to just put some image processing stuff on the cRio–it’s faster, and your driver isn’t trying to squint at a 30x30 pixel image.