Max number of Cameras

After reading the guide and looking at any notation involving the cameras, it is unclear to us if there is a max number of cameras allowed on your bot. Did anyone see the specific rule about this?

No, there’s no specific rule. Key rules that might limit the quantity of cameras are bandwidth (if you’re streaming the video), cost, and (eventually) weight.

1 Like

Thank you. We figured their would be a limit at some point to how many we can connect to the roborio and bandwidth, cost, and weight are also important variables to consider.

Note you aren’t restricted to only connecting cameras to the RoboRIO. You can put a coprocessor such as a Raspberry Pi on your robot to handle camera streams as well.

Oh, that is a good option. We were thinking to just use a usb hub.

If you choose to use a Raspberry Pi, you may want to explore using the FRCVision image. Documentation here.

Thank you so much, Peter!

You can also mount a single camera on a servo-controlled mount… look left, look right… just like we had to do in video games before multi-monitor displays arrived!

Or… and I’m waiting to see who manages to pull this off… use a head mounted display that tracks the direction the driver is looking and moves the camera to match.

Jason

4 Likes

There is also nothing that says you need to stream all the cameras at the same time. Our team usually has 2 cameras on the robot, but we switch the stream going to the DS, depending on the mode. That does require programming but it is pretty simple.

Smart idea; we plan to put one on a servo mount near our hatch panel pickup.

If you do the servo mount thing, ensure that you test it thoroughly under rigorous operation conditions… Larger camera (leverage and mass) on a wimpy mount is not a good recipe for success, as we have found in the past. It also requires a lot of driver/operator practice to deal with a changing frame of reference.