Zxen
Australia
Asked
— Edited
I need to extend the camera from it's circuit board and mount it in something like a cable dot on the side of the head facing forward. At the moment she looks borg. Not good. This is for department stores for women's fashion. Can I separate the camera with wires so its just a tiny dot?
How do I do that please?
PS The camera will definitely not be placed in the face of this particular mannequin head - It will be under the chin or facing forward from the ear.
Incremental progress like that will prevent CPA as you put it.
If you are having difficulty mounting inside of a curved Head I could suggest using the new version 2 EZ-Robot camera and peel the lens away from the PCB to change the angle a little. It is just held against the PCB with double-sided tape.
My second suggestion would be to make only a 1mm hole somewhere in the mannequin's head. A 1mm hole is all you need for the actual lens portion to see.
Now you may have to drill out a small cavity for the rest of the lens but the opening only need to be 1mm. Here's an example, created with my amazing MS paint skills LOL.
I should also note that the camera v2 lens is interchangeable with Fish eyes lenses that are somewhat difficult to find but do exist. But note that you will need a larger viewing hole to incorporate a larger lens; it have would be 10mm in diameter.
Oh and yes I can confirm that you can definitely extend the camera cable, we've gone as far as 10 feet successfully but we've never really tested out the maximum range.
I have spent hours testing the facial and colour tracking and its just like I remember. EXTREMELY SLOW AND UNRELIABLE REACTION TIME.
The motors in my robot's head are fast - she can nod and shake her head faster than a real human. But when she is tracking, she moves like a pigeon. I get best results when I shrink the grid and I am moving my face further away, but I basically need to move past at less than 1km/h so she doesn't lose me.
Can someone please tell me how to fix this so its smooth?
Is it slow because it requires WiFi? Video is being sent wirelessly to my computer fast enough, so I don't understand whats causing this delay thats so extreme she moves in slow motion. Are the calculations being done in the ARC software or on the board? She only moves smoothly if I tell her to move 5 or more steps at a time, but this often results in overshooting the mark, after which her head begins to thrash violently to get back to the mark.
@ Zxen I feel your pain. I've tried to get smooth motion from tracking and the best thing to play with is the increments steps found in the camera set up where your servos are set up.
Some of the changes are:
- Single board design = smaller form factor
- Added Heatsink for on board cooling and spacing inside JD's head
- More even gain adjustment for lighting changes
- Flexible and modular ribbon connector for camera CCD + lens assembly
- Adjustable and/or removable lens, for focus or replacement lens
- RGB LED feedback
Version 2 of the camera is meant to match the operation of version 1 but with some quality of life improvements from a hardware and firmware perspective.
I used the standard JD example project. I added a script that made Servospeed 0 for the pan and tilt servos: D0 & D1 (The fastest speed). I also slowed down the camera frame rate a touch with the slider bar. The last thing that I changed was the vertical increment steps, I changed it to 2.
*Edit: I also adjusted the Grid lines to be closer to center
So just so I understand better:
*Set servo speeds to zero so servos will move as fast as possible.
*Slow down camera frame rate a little. (Why is this?)
*Changed was the vertical increment steps. (Why is this and will this setting be different for others?)
*Tighten up the grid lines. I assume this is because tracking takes place in the two side boxes that this gives the software more room to work trying to bring the object back to center?
Also, is the camera you're using in this demo stationary or mounted on the part of the robot that is panning back and forth?
Thanks again!
Also thanks for the tut on the tracking. I never thought about setting the speed first. That is fast and pretty smooth tracking. I look forward to trying it out with hard core Alan this week.
Correct, I wanted the servos to react as fast as possible.
I slowed down the camera frame rate a little bit to decrease the chance of missed frames due to communication slow downs over WiFi.
Yes, you are correct. In the tracking settings I changed the vertical increment steps to move a little farther with each movement, this will likely be different for each robots/servo. Distance away from the person being tracked will also affect this value.
Yes, you are correct again Dave :). I tightened up the grid lines so JD would have more time to detect my face moving away from center. The servos will only move if my face is detected in one of the 8 "boxes" (left, right, upper right, top, etc) surrounding the center box. To summarize, it gives JD more room and time to detect a change in face position.
The camera I was using was inside JD's head and his pan and tilt (neck and head) servos were doing the tracking.
I was using 3 horizontal incremental steps. I was connected via AP mode (no router involved)
I believe I was averaging 10fps.
Have you tried AP mode instead of client mode (connected to router)?
A direct connection (AP mode) is our default mode. It is very easy to connect via AP mode. Do you have anti-virus software that could be blocking your connection to ARC?
AP mode means your computer is connected directly to the ezb. You learned this when using the learn section for your ezrobot product.
Client mode means your ezb is connected to a router. You can only know of client mode if you followed the tutorial on the learn section for your ezrobot product.
There is no need for updating the connection tutorial. The last update of the tutorial was a detailed and fantastic video less than one week ago. There is no additional information. For client mode, only two peices of information is necessary: SSID and PASSWORD. Client mode is incredibly easy.
However, client mode depends on the speed of your router. Ezrobot does not own your router. We have no idea the speed of your router. The performance you experience in client mode has no relationship to ezrobot. The router speed is specific to the model and manufacturer, and not related to ezrobot.
If your computer is experiencing low frame rate with AP mode, then the pc speed may be the reason - OR the default settings have been changed.
1) Can you verify that you have the latest ARC?
2) why camera resolution setting are you using?
3) try adding a new camera control and enabling face tracking with ezrobot camera. Do NOT change any other settings. Do you still get a low frame rate?
First, every control has a ? (question mark). You can press that ? (question mark) to view help about that control. The control in question is the CAMERA CONTROL. Here is a direct link to the Camera Control manual page: http://www.ez-robot.com/Tutorials/Help.aspx?id=80
The reason for visiting that page is a section about VIDEO RESOLUTIONS. Please read that section. It is incredibly important that you understand what increasing the resolution does for a computer.
By increasing the video resolution to 640x480, look at the number of Bytes per second your CPU must process.
Lastly, i am curious about what other settings may have been modified in the camera control. Please visit my previous message and follow the instructions. Do not change any settings and use the camera control with Face tracking.
Everything I have typed is presented in the Camera Control manual page.