I was wondering how many teams that are going to the Kansas City regional got the camera to work and can use it to score a keeper in autonomous?
Calling all Kansas City Teams!!!
www.team935.info
Northmen Robotics at Oak Park will be there. Because of the bad weather this year, we were not able to get the camera working. We plan on using most of our pit time to get the camera working.
I will be there with team 1825, We have the camera on our robot and we will use it in autonomous to score a keeper. You can see our robothere.
I’m the programmer for 1825–if you have questions on getting the CMU cam working, I might be able to help.
The weather around here has been truly horrible! Especially for us, as a homeschool team–we are forced to drive from all over the place, some members traveling as much as 45 minutes one-way to get to a meeting.
However, yes, we did get our camera working. The lens is off-center, the default pan/tilt values were useless, and some of the numbers needed tweaked–but after a lot of effort we did eventually get it working quite nicely. However, our testing platform didn’t allow for us to test very thoroughly with multiple lights being in view–I have a tweak in mind for when we get there, but I can’t do too much with it until we actually get to a real arena.
I have actually gotten the camera to track just fine. I am just having problems using our gyro to turn to the angle of the light. The angle is so minute that the robot either doesn’t move or it undershoots. If you have any advice please do tell.
Dustin
The key here is to use a PD/PID loop in combination with the PAN_SERVO value provided by the camera’s tracking code. Set the gain large enough, and even small differences in the camera’s left/right position will cause your robot to move.
I have set the gain to 500 and the robot sits there and you can here the motors trying to move the robot. So I set the I higher but then it overshoots. Since it’s in a case statement I am thinking I need more or less of a range for it to go to the next case. I have been working with it for 3 days straight but it still wont go to the correct angle.
Why use a case statement in a PD loop?
The gain I used on our robot is 5 or 6… however, the output of the PD loop is then sent to our drive code, which incorporates an exponential drive algorithm.
The best thing to do is to use a printf statement right before the drive motors (or, even better, AFTER) are set–this will enable you to read EXACTLY what the drive motors are getting.
Since this may not be possible with the robots having been already shipped, I’ll give you a quick fix:
By now, since you’ve probably figured out a minimum value that DOES make the motors move the robot, set a MINIMUM speed limit. Something like…
//150 and 105 are just arbitrary numbers; replace them with the minimum speeds that turns your robot
//copy this code for each motor
if (motor_speed > 129 && motor_speed < 150)
{
motor_speed = 150;
}
else if (motor_speed < 126 && motor_speed > 105)
{
motor_speed = 105;
}
Do that for both motors, and it should limit their minimum speed. If they’re getting a value a little off center it’ll increase their speed to the value you define as a minimum. That stops them from “humming” and actually makes the robot move, even at very low speeds as defined by the PD control.
I’ll try that. Good luck it Kansas City.
Hope that works for you!
Good luck, and we’ll see you in March. 
One week to Kansas City’s Inaugural Regional. Good luck to all the teams attending. Let’s make it a GREAT one.
Looking for a webcast so the community of team 2165 can watch the team during their first regional. Does anyone know of the URL where I can find this?
How are things shaping up?
For us things are going extremely well. I think the most our team could put on the rack in two minutes was 7. We averaged about 4 to 5. I was amazed at how many robots were not completed. More than about 60 percent of teams at Kansas City were not completed. I spent more time in other people’s pits than I did my own. Along with three other teams we are working on completing a teams entire robot. All they had was a metal frame and the KOP and that was it. There was only one practice match that I know of where 6 teams were present. There was even one round where we were the only team on the field. Even through all of this the Kansas City regional is being run very smoothly and the judges and officials are doing a great job keeping the matches running on time.
Here’s a more direct link to the live video stream:
MOREnet Streamed Events: FIRST
The first link under the “Robots Alive! FIRST Robotics Greater Kansas City Regional Competition” section on that page shows the field action. I just watched Match 14 (with the Bomb Squad’s blue alliance winning 10-0). The video stream is very choppy - perhaps they didn’t anticipate the number of viewers??
anyone know why they replayed match 6? or was it just a error on the site
Before the alliance selections, a laptop was given away by a drawing of surveys completed by the teams in the KC Regional - Team #2164 was the winner!!
A member of Team 16 thanked the mentors and introduced a message from the Governor of Kansas, Kathleen Sebelius. She apologized for not being able to attend in person, but gave a very well-thought out audio address to the participants. The message, I think, made it clear that the Gov. “gets FIRST”. The Gov. is part of a task force with other governors addressing educational needs for the US and believes FIRST is a very good example of what can be done to inspire students, especially in math and science.
The selections were completed, but not before a rookie captain got a “baptism by fire”. The #8 alliance captain wasn’t fully prepared (to say the least). When asked for his selection, he invited the top seed (#1 alliance captain team). The MC said he’s sure you would have to have them as a partner, but they’re not available. He asked to go speak to his coach - not allowed!! The rookie captain “interviewed” remaining team captains: “Who can score 3 ringers?”. After he finally made a selection, the MC said: “the good news is you have a partner, the bad news is you have to select another”. It was a pretty chaotic scene. Message to team captains: Have SOME sort of strategy (pick the top ranked available team or lowest team number.
anyone know why they replayed match 6? or was it just a error on the site