On this page you will find information about how to operate RoboSight.

Quick Start

1. Wire RoboSight to the 12V power distribution board on your robot.  RoboSight's case has the polarity + and - marked. Use the screw terminals to connect power using about 24 gauge wire.  The screw terminal can be accessed using a hole at the top of the case where a small screwdriver can be inserted.

2. Connect an Ethernet cable from RoboSight into your onboard router.  It takes about 15 seconds for RoboSight to fully boot up and to start processing. When it does you will see the green indicator light on the ethernet port start to flash.

3. Open the web interface in a browser. By default RoboSight will use 192.168.1.12 as its IP address. You can change this IP address to your team network IP address by running the following Windows PC application:

http://www.robosight.com/downloads/RoboSight_Finder.zip

See the section Web Interface, below for further information on this tool.

4. From within the web interface (Chrome and Firefox Only) access the Setup
tab to confirm the correct configuration for the Network Tables server (i.e. roboRio).

5. Move the robot such that a boiler stack target is visible and confirm this detection in the Competition View tab in the web browser interface AND using tableviewer to confirm the detection values are being updated within the network tables.

Web Interface

By default RoboSight will use 192.168.1.12 as its IP address. You can change this IP address
to your team network IP address by running the following Windows PC application:

http://www.robosight.com/downloads/RoboSight_Finder.zip

When first run, the Finder application should indicate RoboSight's IP address. This address may or may not be directly accessible when accessed via a browser given your current network configuration. If pressing the "Launch in Browser" button does not connect, you will need to type in an appropriate IP address that can be accessed. When on the robot we recommend using the form of 10.TE.AM.12 where TEAM 3456 would then be 10.34.56.12. As the normal Axis IP camera (if used) is .11 we recommend using .12 for RoboSight.

You can change the IP address of RoboSight by typing in 10.34.56.12 into the provided edit box and press "Force IP" to tell RoboSight to change its IP address. After a couple seconds, you can then press the Launch Browser button to start the Web interface to RoboSight. Note, from here on one can just launch a browser with the appropriate IP address of the form http://10.34.56.12/ to bring up the RoboSight interface.

After launching the browser with the appropriate IP address you should see a very dark video feed along with numbers refreshing on the right side of the interface. You can click on the different camera views (Detection, Fast Shutter, Calibrated and Raw) to see different aspects of the camera. The displayed video at 480x240 is much smaller than what is processed at 1280x640 as these are meant for verification and configuration purposes and NOT for viewing during a competition.

a. Raw View - This video stream indicates the actual pixel values as captured by the camera. This stream has auto-exposure set to provide you with an image you can recognize and use for any adjustments to the camera to position it correctly on the robot. Note, this mode is NOT optimal for target detection and thus should NOT be used when in competition.

b. Calibrated View - This video stream shows a calibrated view of the camera where straight lines are rectified to be straight as apposed to bent or curved due to lens distortion. As RoboSight uses a 150 degree lens for maximum viewing of the field, the actual captured image will be very distorted and not appropriate for distance calculations. When switching from Raw to Calibrated you should notice wall edges and columns become straightened. Note, this mode is NOT optimal for target detection and thus should NOT be used when in competition.

c. Fast Shutter View - As RoboSight operates in the IR space the actual image that the system processes will look very dark to you. This video stream shows what that looks like to help indicate any potential IR issues that may cause detection to fail.

d. Competition View - This final view shows the video processed by RoboSight. The image has been thresholded which will make it a black and white image (as apposed to grayscale) where any detected targets will show up with a green box. The red line coloring helps to show what parts within the green detection box have contributed towards the detection. Those parts of the image that remain white were not matched against the two stripe pattern.

e. Setup - The setup interface allows you to specify basic setup parameters that RoboSight users for normal operation.

i. Target Confidence - Specifies the confidence level needed for a pattern to be indicated as a match. Lowering this number will cause more matches to happen on non-target areas. Increasing this value will make target detection a lot more careful about what patterns are target patterns.

ii. Min Target Lines - Specifies how many vertical lines need to match the specified pattern in order for a target detection to occur. This attribute can be thought of as a minimum width of a detected target. If a target pattern is detected but only few vertical lines actually match that pattern, no target will be detected since the number of lines contributing towards the detection is too low. This feature assumes that the target stripes are wide enough to trigger a couple matched lines and helps to remove spurious false target detections that may randomly occur in the environment.

iii. Max Target Lines - Specifies the maximum number of vertical lines that can contribute towards a detection. As it is possible to get very close to a target which would increase the number of vertical lines contributing towards a target, its best to leave this parameter at zero (infinite) which will not use this parameter during detection.

iv. Min Aspect Ratio - Specifies the minimum value of width/height of the final detected target. This feature helps eliminate false tall skinny targets from being detected.

v. Max Aspect Ratio - Specifies the maximum value of width/height of the final detected target. This feature helps eliminate false short fat targets from being detected.

vi. Required Frames - When a target is in view, the target will be detected quite consistently for many frames. In cases where a random combination or image flicker causes a false detection you want to ignore this detection unless it is present for a couple successive frames. The Required Frames parameter specifies how many frames a target should be detected within an image in order for a detection to be reported. Likewise, it also specifies the number of frames a target should be absent in order to declare it gone. This feature helps to stabilize when the system state changes from target acquired to target lost and vice versa.

vii. Shutter - Specifies the shutter speed when in Competition. This defaults to 500 and should be left unchanged unless the RoboSight LEDs change in how they are illuminating the field.

viii. Network Tables IP - Specifies the address of your network tables server (i.e. roboRio). This will normally be of the form 10.TE.AM.2 or using the example above 10.34.56.2. If this address is incorrect, RoboSight will NOT be able to transmit the detection information correctly to the network tables server.

ix. Network Tables Rate - Specifies how quickly the Network Tables should be updated. In most cases the default of 100ms will be sufficient. In previous years, this was the maximum rate the network tables could be updated and should be sufficient for most configurations. It is rare when your robot motors would need to be updated more frequently than 10 times a second.

x. RoboSight IP - Specifies the current RoboSight IP address. You can chose to change this to any number you wish but on doing so you will need to change the browser URL to the correct new number as the old IP will no longer function. Should you lose track of the new number, you can always run the RoboSight_Finder application to find and change the RoboSight IP address.

f. Upgrade - If a newer version of the RoboSight software becomes available you can use the Upgrade button to download and install the latest version. Please note that you MUST have connected the RoboSight to a network that has Internet access as the software is hosted outside of your private network. Failure to connect to an Internet available network will be indicated as an error message.