I am using Windriver C++ to program my camera and have it working great in autonomous and tracking. My problem is that I have heard that I need to adjust the camera to the real live conditions on the field for my upcoming Regional. In order to prepare to be able to do that I have been trying to get smart ahead of time.
I have read on the forums here that the easiest thing to do is adjust the brightness to account for the bright lights. Two questions have come up and I need help.
I have tried to just logon to the camera using its IP address but have not succeeded there. I have tried logging on while it it hooked to the cRio as well as straight to my computer with no luck. I am using the crossover cable while making this connection. Do I need to change the IP on my computer from the working configuration to another configuration in order to talk to the camera? What is the procedure you successful people are using to talk to the camera?
The other question is whether there is a Labview program similar to the dashboard that I can evaluate the colors with? I keep seeing people reference some Find Two Colors.vi but I can’t find that program anywhere. I want to use Windriver so don’t want to re-image my CRio to use the Track Two Color Demo.
Yes, you’ll need to change your computer’s IP address to talk to the camera as you describe. The camera’s IP address when set correctly for use on the robot is 192.168.0.90. Assuming your camera is set that way, and you have your camera connected directly to your computer with your crossover cable, try setting your computer IP to 192.168.0.1.
There is a LabVIEW program that gets installed on your computer along with all the other FRC software called “NI Vision Assistant 8.6”. It runs on your PC. That’s the program I’ve used to determine the optimum HSL range settings to use with C++. There are instructions how to use it in my article on the Think Tank http://thinktank.wpi.edu/article/118. Those instructions are for use with the 2006-2007 green lamp, but the principles for finding HSL ranges for the 2009 target are the same. I’d make measurements under a wide variety of lighting conditions, and be prepared to take measurements at the regional to make last-minute adjustments.
Thanks, setting my Ip address did the trick. I don’t like having to keep juggling IP addresses with my laptop but I guess I don’t have a choice. I just need to keep a notebook with all my numbers written down so I won’t need to get to the internet on the field when calibrating.
I will take a look at the white paper and the software you mentioned, thanks again.
We don’t like juggling IP addresses either, so we use batch files like the ones attached to switch back-and-forth. There may be a more elegant way to do it, but this works. Rename the files to end in “.bat” instead of “.txt”. Keep the files on your desktop and double-click to run. 192.168.0.1.bat for the camera, 10.0.67.6.bat for the cRIO (use your own team number) and DHCP.bat to switch back to normal operation.
As for the LV example, the Find Two Colors.vi is similar to the C++ example provided by BAE/WPI except that since it is LV, it has a panel to see what is going on. There is also a utility called Camera Field Test.vi built from common code with the example, but which will run on the PC. I also added a live HSL display and a button/FKey to save images to disk. If you have LV installed on a laptop, this can be used to do the test independent of the robot.
