How to Use Spektrum VA1100 with Roborio?

Is there a way to use the Spektrum VA1100 camera with the Roborio? Also, I have no idea what to do about vision processing. Can we just hook up the camera to work with the DriverStation camera section?

That camera won’t work over USB, nor is it legal to use with the wireless function. You could feasibly buy a NTSC to USB converter, but it won’t be fun convincing your LRI that the camera’s legal to use.

In terms of vision processing, usually using a coprocessor (like a Raspberry Pi) is the best option. FRCVision is easy to get started with.

So you’re saying we need a new camera? Do you have any suggestions?

And we have to use a Raspberry Pi?

You don’t need a new camera, but I’d advise not using that one - will be more trouble than it’s worth. A cheap ELP cam off Amazon should do the job - my go-to is this one.

If you’re just talking about streaming the camera to the driver station, that’s pretty easy, just plug it into the Rio and use the wpilib CameraServer class. However, if you’re talking about actual processing (retro tape target acquisition), it gets more complicated.

You can write a vision processing pipeline on the Rio or stream to and process on the driver station. However, you might run into performance issues (in the case of processing on the computationally weak Rio) and latency issues (in the case of streaming to the driver station and doing processing there), so most teams use a Rio-side coprocessor. Doesn’t have to be a rPi - Jetson TX1/2, Odroid XU4, and Kangaroo PC are all popular choices. Hell, we put a desktop motherboard on there one year (not recommended! we were doing some over the top stuff, haha). RPi is probably going to be the easiest though, thanks to the FRCVision image and the abundance of resources for it. The JeVois camera is also a great choice if you’re willing to get your hands dirty with some basic serial communication - massively simplifies system integration.