How hard is it to do the vision process?

[cay]

For this year’s game, is it very hard to get the vision process to work? We have never used vision process before, just want to know if it takes too much time to do. Also, if it is doable, where could we find the tutorial?

[BitTwiddler]

@cay

For this year’s game, is it very hard to get the vision process to work? We have never used vision process before, just want to know if it takes too much time to do. Also, if it is doable, where could we find the tutorial?

1. Here’s a link to National Instruments’ white paper on image processing. It’s from the 2012 game but still useful for understanding how to process a target using video imaging. https://decibel.ni.com/content/docs/DOC-20173
2. Teams using LabView for programming may find that the robot main application already contains some software that does this.
   Check it out.

[rich2202]

You have to start sometime. If you can afford to dedicated 2 programmers to the task, you could figure it out.

Note: Learn how to launch a thread/process. You won’t be able to get it to work inside your main code (takes too long). It is best to run it as a parallel process. Main process sends a request, and looks for the vision process to set a value.

[cay]

@BitTwiddler

1. Here’s a link to National Instruments’ white paper on image processing. It’s from the 2012 game but still useful for understanding how to process a target using video imaging. https://decibel.ni.com/content/docs/DOC-20173
2. Teams using LabView for programming may find that the robot main application already contains some software that does this.
   Check it out.

Thank you so much!

[cay]

@rich2202

You have to start sometime. If you can afford to dedicated 2 programmers to the task, you could figure it out.

Note: Learn how to launch a thread/process. You won’t be able to get it to work inside your main code (takes too long). It is best to run it as a parallel process. Main process sends a request, and looks for the vision process to set a value.

Thank you! We could try to figure it out.

[Greg_McKaskle]

As mentioned, the default LV code has a camera server for USB. This isn’t needed for the Axis, so both of those will work for dashboard display and/or dashboard processing. Robot code contains a camera acquisition loop that is disabled until you turn on a global and add the processing.

The Getting Started window of LabVIEW has a tab on the left for Tutorials. One of them, eight or nine, is about vision and ways to integrate it into either the robot loop or into the dashboard.

There are other good ways to do the processing, but this should get you pretty far down the path. Ask questions in this thread if you have issues.
Greg McKaskle

[cay]

@Greg McKaskle

As mentioned, the default LV code has a camera server for USB. This isn’t needed for the Axis, so both of those will work for dashboard display and/or dashboard processing. Robot code contains a camera acquisition loop that is disabled until you turn on a global and add the processing.

The Getting Started window of LabVIEW has a tab on the left for Tutorials. One of them, eight or nine, is about vision and ways to integrate it into either the robot loop or into the dashboard.

There are other good ways to do the processing, but this should get you pretty far down the path. Ask questions in this thread if you have issues.
Greg McKaskle

Thank you! But I think our team is using Java instead of LabVIEW, so is there a way to learn how to do the vision process for Java?

[Greg_McKaskle]

In that case, I’d look at the Screensteps Live tutorials on vision processing in Java.

Of course, you can also send the images to the dashboard and use a different language.

Good luck.
Greg McKaskle

[JCharlton]

Can someone comment on how hard is it to create a script with the National Instruments Vision Assistant and then incorporate it into a Java RIO program?

The Vision Assistant is a user-friendly way of getting in to vision processing. Worth installing just to take a look.

[cay]

@Greg McKaskle

In that case, I’d look at the Screensteps Live tutorials on vision processing in Java.

Of course, you can also send the images to the dashboard and use a different language.

Good luck.
Greg McKaskle

Thank you so much! We will look at the tutorials.

[cay]

@JCharlton

Can someone comment on how hard is it to create a script with the National Instruments Vision Assistant and then incorporate it into a Java RIO program?

The Vision Assistant is a user-friendly way of getting in to vision processing. Worth installing just to take a look.

Thank you! We will try the Vision Assistant.

[mbshark]

You may want to try out RoboRealm. We have had success with it in the past and use Java on our robot. It is included in the KoP and the code is in TIMS. Look at http://www.roborealm.com/FRC2016/index.php for tutorials/downloading. Good luck!

P.S. Please note in the future, that you can reply to multiple posts in one post–this makes it easier to read and get through posts.

[cay]

@mbshark

You may want to try out RoboRealm. We have had success with it in the past and use Java on our robot. It is included in the KoP and the code is in TIMS. Look at http://www.roborealm.com/FRC2016/index.php for tutorials/downloading. Good luck!

P.S. Please note in the future, that you can reply to multiple posts in one post–this makes it easier to read and get through posts.

Thank you so much! It looks very good!