Cameras mounted on the bot: How many?

Technical Technical Discussion
1
  1. What is the limit (either bay way of rules, or driver-station capabilities) on the number of cameras that can be mounted and used on the bot?
  2. Can more than one be viewed from the driver-station, if so, must they be viewed one-at-a-time or can multiple cameras be viewed simultaneously?
2

Having never used multiple before (though we might use two this year), take this with a grain of salt:

Cameras beyond 2 (if USB) or 1 (if Ethernet) require a hub of some kind to simply get more ports. With the default driver station, you will only get one stream at a time. If you have multiple views at a time up on screen, watch out for bandwidth usage.

3

Thank you.
And congrats on your (nearby) gas prices. National news:

4

Nearby? Houghton Lake is nearly 400 miles from Houghton.

5

Whoops! I better dust off the atlas. Sorry.

6

I have not found a rule regarding the number of cameras. That said, there are USB bandwidth limits to simultaneous operations. It is possible to simultaneously transmit multiple cameras across the network and display them on the drivers station if desired. It is also possible to switch between cameras one at a time. I posted some code last year that did the switching.

What do you need? I may be able to dig something up.

7

We have three camera requirements, (auto targeting forward, driving forward, rear boulder pickup/driving in reverse for some defenses), but we’re going to try to keep our camera count down to one or two. We’re considering options to include changing camera parameters on the fly, mounting the camera on a servo, and using a mirror (or set of mirrors) to eliminate at least one of the cameras.

8

Thank you so much for the offer. If needed, we will let you know.

9

Great suggestions with the mirrors. Thank you.

10

If you put a parabolic mirror over your robot one camera can see all directions except straight up. Use software to unwarp the image to a panoramic. Not sure if anyone really needs that but it can be done.

Example

11

Amazing. Thank you.

12

Can you post a link?

We might have a forward and rearward facing camera.

Thanks.

13

Found the link. The code may need some repairs.

It’s also possible to feed both simultaneously to the driverstation if that is desired. Be warned: Bandwidth limits tally up quick.

14

Thank you