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Problems Saving RoboFiles
Anonymous from United Kingdom  [99 posts]
17 year
I just updated to Ver 1.8.2.0 from 1.7.x.x.  I can't save .robo files anymore.  When I go to save a file(By clicking on the Save Button) it always creates a jpg even if I select .robo under the file type.  

On another note, I got my platform tracking squares of red tape tonight.  I am having trouble getting it to give up on the closest piece of tape and track to the next.  I remember you did something clever with edges at the RSSC meeting, but I can't re-create it.

Thanks!
mason
jasailor  [4 posts] 17 year
Good question!  There isn't even a save button.
jasailor  [4 posts] 17 year
A work around is to just exit the program when you want to save it.  
Anonymous 17 year
Another is to just type in ".robo" as part of the filename (i.e. be sure your filename has an extension). There is a known bug that will be fixed in the next release (either later today or tomorrow) where you just need to type in .robo in order to save a program file or .gif, .jpeg etc to save an image.

Martin, we're about to release the new additions to the flood fill module which will have what you're looking for. This is in addition to the tutorial that we showed last weekend.

STeven.
Problems Saving RoboFiles
Anonymous
17 year
Martin,

Correction ... that feature should already be in the Blob Filter. We selected the "Location->Avoids Border" feature which will eliminate any blobs that touch the image borders. Thus it will track it until the square starts to go offscreen which will then be eliminated by the blob filter.

STeven.
Anonymous from United Kingdom  [99 posts] 17 year
Thanks for all the replies!  I will check out the blob filter features tonight.  There are some details on the work so far posted at www.profmason.com
Anonymous from United Kingdom  [99 posts] 17 year
I am tracking red checkers on a black background pretty effectively now.  Best results seem to come from a flood fill (To smooth out background) followed by an RGB filter.  A blob filter handles noise and eliminates the edge problem.  This works as long as the checkers are spaced appropriately.  I am still having some trouble turning about at the end of the track.  


A couple of things:  The flood filter seems to give a massive performance hit.  I can get 25 fps pretty consistently without the flood fill.  With the flood fill it drops to about 10 fps!  Is there some pre processing I can do before the flood fill to reduce its performance hit?  

Also, I would like to pass the current fps to the robot.  Is this already setup as a variable?  Is there a part of the help file that I am missing?

I need to get some decent pwm setup to drive the robot smoother and faster. Right now I am managing to turn in 2 degree increments, but that means it takes about 18 seconds to make a complete circle at 10 fps.

On another note, I am off to the Vex Competition tomorrow, the new Vexplorer robot has a wireless camera and seems like it is a pretty nice platform.  The students just turned in a grant proposal last night to get a bunch of them.
Anonymous 17 year
profmason,

Yes the flood fill is a rather expensive module but there are always ways to increase speed. Can you post the robofile that you are seeing the slowdown on? We just want to know what options you have enabled in the flood fill and can then do some performance tuning based on that. Certain parts of the flood fill are brand new and might need some performance tuning.

The latest update 1.8.3.1 has the FPS as a base variable. Also added in power variables in case you ever put that laptop on your robot :-)

How was the Vex competition? We're eager to start using the newest Vex platform but it is apparently not as programmable as the older version .. besides maybe with vision!

STeven.
Anonymous from United Kingdom  [99 posts] 17 year
I am attaching the robo file.  Actually 10 frames a second isn't that bad.  I regeared the treads and changed the programming and now it is doing laps around the course.(A dozen checkers spreadout on a black background)  So far the record is three laps. Part of the fun is that it moves the checkers slightly each time it runs over them.

The vex competition was great.  There were 46 teams competing from about 20 different schools.  (Probably about 300 people)   I will post some pictures on my website when I am not having so much fun with this new robot!

Ok, while this post has been sitting here it has just done another dozen laps of so.  It seems like it will run until it runs out of batteries.
program.robo
Anonymous 17 year
It seems like the maxRGB function works pretty well to eliminate background instead of the floodfill.  Since I am using RED checkers that are only nominally red, I can apply the maxRGB and then pump up the Intensity and Hue in the RGB filter to eliminate noise. The maxRGB function seems much less processor intensive then the floodfill.

Now I just need to have a chance to try the robot in some daylight......
Anonymous 17 year
Prof Mason,

Nice going! Yes, the RGB Max module is much faster than the flood fill. We had a look at that module but were only able to increase the speed by about 10% ... which would probably not help much. The other suggestion is to decrease the image size that you are processing. For most tasks 320x240 is much bigger than is needed ... decreasing to 160x120 should work well and will be about 4x faster for any module.

Note that we also have an ellipse finder schedule for release in the next couple of weeks which should help in finding checkers (cause they are circles but look like ellipses from the robot camera's point of view).

STeven.

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