Machine Vision

Eric R

I am looking at a small automation project with a propeller·and looking to use·a camera with software that will allow locating or finding a object.· Cognex comes to mind as I know their product will allow this and serial out a 640 x 480 pix map of the object location. With simple math you could position a servo to this location once scaled.

Since this project is on a budget, does anyone know of a camera like this for more of a hobby use? I could probably do this with two TSL1401 line scans but this would require passing the entire part to get the profile and height then using a second line scan turned 90 degrees to follow the object as it moves.

I hope I am making sense, seeing the entire picture with a realtime output of say 240 pixels high and follow it from 0 to 640 pixels wide would be of benefit.

Thanks

Franklin

Have you looked at the CMUCam?

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- Stephen

mctrivia

sparkfun has lots of cheap cmos sensors.

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24 bit LCD Breakout Board coming soon. $21.99 has backlight driver and touch sensitive decoder.

Eric R

Thanks for the input. It looks like the cmucam3 might have some promise. I am looking for a camera that will identify a specific feature rather than a color. This feature would be the thinnest portion of the object and will not always be in the same location nor always be the same width.
It would be nice if the camera could handle the location and send a simple serial string for the mapped location in pixels.

VIRAND

"It would be nice if the camera could handle the location and send a simple serial string for the mapped location in pixels. "

It would be nice if my camera made me look like a sexy movie star.

I plan to try experimenting with artificial neural networks,
and also see if there is still a hologram factory in the city and if anyone knows how to make associative holograms.
Imagine a lens for the camera (like the kind that make shapes out of laser pointer beams) that
magically puts a square around the object you want to find so that the camera could see the square.

Just ideas of how it might be doable without a fairy godmother and three wishes.

rjo_

Eric

In general:

There is no perfect solution... a perfect solution would be a camera that you could talk to one pixel, line, or area at a time over a convenient interface... SPI, etc.

There are serial cameras... and if you look over in the Prop forum, you will find some implementations... can't remember where or by whom.

But... if you have a specific project in mind... with specific real world objects, then a really good answer would depend upon the specifics.

My favorite imaging device for the Prop right now is http://www.parallax.com/tabid/768/txtSearch/line+scan/List/0/SortField/4/Default.aspx...
This is a line imager, which allows you to very conveniently deal with image information... at the highest rate and with the most efficient use of RAM.
No experience with this yet... but it is definitely on my list.

You could the imager on a servo... which could match your other servos... so that your final image could be in "servo" coordinates.

It would be helpful to see an actual image of a real object that you need to image... or one close to it, so that the image processing stuff could be matched to the actual problem.

Time constraints are also important.... how fast does it have to work? What error rate is acceptable?... etc. etc.

Rich