Spiral_72, It sounds like you really need to start using the Propeller. It's amazing IMO.
I'm still thinking about two possible routes with some sort of machine vision. One, and probably the easier of the two, is to use a Wii camera with a laser like Gareth has done. The second method is use Hanno's method with an external ADC to read the video signal from an inexpensive camera. I have a couple of these ADC on their way from Digi-Key now. Hanno explains the process well in "The Official Guide" book. (I don't recall the books name right now.)
The Propeller is the way to go when things start to get complicated.
Yessir, I agree with the Prop. I have one in my shopping cart now just waiting....
I wish you all the luck with vision. I don't think I can handle it. It sounds easy to say machine vision, blah, blah, but I'm afraid it's WAY beyond me and the time I can put in it. It's amazing stuff though. Very, very cool! I can't even grasp the concept of telling the computer to look for a wall, or define a wall or define anything based on an array of bytes we call an image. Whew!
I haven't actually done any machine vision myself, yet.
I'd like to think I'm up to the challenge. I used write computer animation software as a hobby. I'm hoping my experience with rotation matrices will help in getting some these machine vision ideas working. (Plus, I plan to use code other's have already developed so I don't really need to smart at all.) I'm not sure how much time I can spend on this stuff. My day job keeps me pretty busy lately.
Moving past the Stamp's capabilities, I wonder if a PC-based parallax effect linescan technique (as implemented in the David laserscanner) would be an option to map surroundings in 3D. Lots of computer horsepower required.
Are you willing to do the vision on the PC and then relay that information to the Propeller? Then you could use ViewPort's built-in OpenCV.
I've also heard of ViewPort users running ViewPort+OpenCV on small PC- like a BeagleBoard for vision, and the Propeller for sensors/actuators.
I wrote an article for Circuit Cellar on machine vision with the propeller and contributed 2 chapters to the official propeller guide- check those out as well...
Hanno
Thanks for the links. I remembered that you had made a tutorial. I'm pretty sure I've read all the material you've mentioned.
I was talking about this with my wife a couple of nights ago and showed her the picture of your danceBot with your kids. She said "Oh, what cute kids" I'm sure you already know your kids are cute though.
I have ViewPort but I'd like to keep all the processing on the Propeller. I like the BeagleBoard idea but I don't think I'm ready to head that direction yet.
I have a new 64 bit Windows 7 machine. Do you know if this kind of machine will play well with ViewPort? I haven't installed it yet. (I have the full version license of ViewPort.)
Hi Duane,
Thanks- like any parent I love getting compliments about my kids- they're both at school now! More time for ViewPort/PropScope/12Blocks/TBot...
I develop on 64bit Win7 so you shouldn't have any problems- always let me know if you need help. (I also test on Vista and XP). Some people run it on Win2000, Mac and Linux... I'm about to do some more vision programming for one of my bots- been looking at something like: http://www.electronics123.com/s.nl/it.A/id.3010/.f
Hanno
Thanks for the information about ViewPort. One of the reasons I hadn't installed it on my new computer was I couldn't find my license key. I found my license key this morning as I was entering receipts into the computer as part of tax preparation. Now I should be ready to go. (My old computer (with ViewPort is now dead)).
I looked at the description of the camera board you linked to. Do you think there is any advantage to having an image saved in jpg format?
I've wondered about this myself. I have a LinkSprite JPEG camera. I couldn't find any information on how to decode a JPEG file (I didn't look real hard). I'm afraid that kind of machine vision may be beyond me for a while. One of the reasons I purchased the camera was to use it as a very slow refreshing webcam with the Spinneret.
I look forward to seeing what you do with some extra free time.
Hanno: It's great to see you back here regularly contributing in the Forums. Hopefully that's a sign that your life in NZ is moving back towards normalcy after that awful quake in NZ. All the recent news is about Japan, but clearly you had incredible losses as well. These are surely tough times around the globe, and it's nice that wizards like yourself can take the time to help out here in the Forum in spite of everything else going on.
Ideally I would use a low-cost, easily accessible DIP camera that provided 640x480 data in configurable color/resolutions in RAW format via some serial protocol. Haven't found one yet. JPEG is nicely documented, hoping to implement a streaming decoder similar to what I did with the NTSC grabber.
Erco-
Yes, slowly returning to normal- been a bit over a month now. Still finding it hard to concentrate, especially with the tragedies in Japan. However, school is back to 80% attendance and kids are coping remarkably well. I'm incredibly thankful for this forum and am excited to attend UPEW this year!
Hanno
Comments
I'm still thinking about two possible routes with some sort of machine vision. One, and probably the easier of the two, is to use a Wii camera with a laser like Gareth has done. The second method is use Hanno's method with an external ADC to read the video signal from an inexpensive camera. I have a couple of these ADC on their way from Digi-Key now. Hanno explains the process well in "The Official Guide" book. (I don't recall the books name right now.)
The Propeller is the way to go when things start to get complicated.
Duane
Yessir, I agree with the Prop. I have one in my shopping cart now just waiting....
I wish you all the luck with vision. I don't think I can handle it. It sounds easy to say machine vision, blah, blah, but I'm afraid it's WAY beyond me and the time I can put in it. It's amazing stuff though. Very, very cool! I can't even grasp the concept of telling the computer to look for a wall, or define a wall or define anything based on an array of bytes we call an image. Whew!
I'd like to think I'm up to the challenge. I used write computer animation software as a hobby. I'm hoping my experience with rotation matrices will help in getting some these machine vision ideas working. (Plus, I plan to use code other's have already developed so I don't really need to smart at all.) I'm not sure how much time I can spend on this stuff. My day job keeps me pretty busy lately.
http://www.david-laserscanner.com/
I wrote up a little tutorial that may help you get started with video input:
http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?126769-Tutorial-on-getting-240x200x16-gray-video-INTO-your-Prop&p=950255#post950255
Here's another link with source code:
http://forums.hannoware.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=288&sid=f0b470839e5bae96bcc4eb74b9cbe64c
Are you willing to do the vision on the PC and then relay that information to the Propeller? Then you could use ViewPort's built-in OpenCV.
I've also heard of ViewPort users running ViewPort+OpenCV on small PC- like a BeagleBoard for vision, and the Propeller for sensors/actuators.
I wrote an article for Circuit Cellar on machine vision with the propeller and contributed 2 chapters to the official propeller guide- check those out as well...
Hanno
Thanks for the links. I remembered that you had made a tutorial. I'm pretty sure I've read all the material you've mentioned.
I was talking about this with my wife a couple of nights ago and showed her the picture of your danceBot with your kids. She said "Oh, what cute kids" I'm sure you already know your kids are cute though.
I have ViewPort but I'd like to keep all the processing on the Propeller. I like the BeagleBoard idea but I don't think I'm ready to head that direction yet.
I have a new 64 bit Windows 7 machine. Do you know if this kind of machine will play well with ViewPort? I haven't installed it yet. (I have the full version license of ViewPort.)
Duane
Thanks- like any parent I love getting compliments about my kids- they're both at school now! More time for ViewPort/PropScope/12Blocks/TBot...
I develop on 64bit Win7 so you shouldn't have any problems- always let me know if you need help. (I also test on Vista and XP). Some people run it on Win2000, Mac and Linux... I'm about to do some more vision programming for one of my bots- been looking at something like: http://www.electronics123.com/s.nl/it.A/id.3010/.f
Hanno
Thanks for the information about ViewPort. One of the reasons I hadn't installed it on my new computer was I couldn't find my license key. I found my license key this morning as I was entering receipts into the computer as part of tax preparation. Now I should be ready to go. (My old computer (with ViewPort is now dead)).
I looked at the description of the camera board you linked to. Do you think there is any advantage to having an image saved in jpg format?
I've wondered about this myself. I have a LinkSprite JPEG camera. I couldn't find any information on how to decode a JPEG file (I didn't look real hard). I'm afraid that kind of machine vision may be beyond me for a while. One of the reasons I purchased the camera was to use it as a very slow refreshing webcam with the Spinneret.
I look forward to seeing what you do with some extra free time.
Duane
Best,
erco
Erco-
Yes, slowly returning to normal- been a bit over a month now. Still finding it hard to concentrate, especially with the tragedies in Japan. However, school is back to 80% attendance and kids are coping remarkably well. I'm incredibly thankful for this forum and am excited to attend UPEW this year!
Hanno