Camera live feed not working

Technical C/C++
#1

All I want is for the camera to broadcast a live feed back to the driver station. The instructions aren’t very clear about this. There is some kind of PCVideoServer class, but I don’t really know what to do with it.

Please help, as you can tell I’m a little short on time =P

#2

All you should have to do is create a new AxisCamera object. It will start the video server for you.

At the top of your file, add

#include "Vision/AxisCamera.h"

Then in your initialization code add this

AxisCamera &axisCam = AxisCamera::GetInstance();

That should get you the video stream back to the default dashboard at the driver station.

#3

Thank you. I did that which means that the problem is with my dev laptop downloading the code, or lack thereof.

#4

Also make sure you have the latest DS version installed and (I know this is an obvious one, but I have to mention it) the camera is configured properly according to the instructions that FIRST provided. You should also read over the code in the vision demo project that came with this year’s software package. They put some delays before trying to communicate with the camera. Get everything to work correctly with their code, then add the correct pieces to yours.

#5

I tried just uploading the code from the camera example onto the robot after I did the DS update again, but it still doesn’t work.

#6

The DS update is notorious for not working. The recommended approach seems to be to uninstall the DS software completely, manually delete any files it left behind, and then run the update. That way you make sure there’s no chance that the updater is leaving behind things it shouldn’t.

To return to an earlier point, the PCVideoServer class is indeed responsible for sending video to your dashboard, but one is automatically started upon getting an instance of AxisCamera.

#7

The first update had an issue that kept it from overwriting the older dashboard app with the newer one, and the effective workaround was to run it once to uninstall everything then run it again to reinstall the proper version of everything. The current update does not have that problem, and the workaround is no longer necessary.

#8

Check this:

#9

double-check the physical wiring of the camera

Also, are you letting the system have a bit of time to load? The camera loads later than the cRIO code so there is a delay before images are sent.

What is the color of the ring around the camera lens while the robot is on?

#10

Just want to add that make sure the ethernet cable is a cross-over cable.

#11 
   AxisCamera &camera = AxisCamera::GetInstance();
                camera.WriteResolution(AxisCamera::kResolution_320x240);
                camera.WriteCompression(20);
                camera.WriteBrightness(0);

Is our camera code an it works fine… not sure what happens if you only have the first line

#12