Forbidden Knowledge

By ChuckCrunch
@ October 12, 2011

• Actuators / output devices: 2 servos
• Control method: autonomous
• CPU: Arduino uno x2
• Sensors / input devices: video camera

http://nootropicdesign.com/ve/index.html Video Experimenter at the moment it is just a experiment early days . parts 2x Arduino 2x mod servos video experimenter board color cam (black and wight would do) behavior at the moment it is just a light chaser due to the way the video board works i used 2 arduinos to get around video Sync issues ,1 to control the video board and 1 to take care of driving the servos ,the video board sends the X and Y value of the brightest spot via serial to the servo control and it sets a direction according to wear the bright spot is , just using left and right of center at the moment

after searching LMR archive i found another robot " Edward" so ive changed the name  ,

22/10/2011

i have come to some conclusions

• low resolution camera would not effect performance ,might be a good thing
• using a camera with a wide spectrum like a color camera is just way to much to light to deal with and unneeded. limiting it to   I.R. sensitive camera or something with a narrow bandwidth would make the information far more meaningful and opens up more possibility for adding your own light sauce
• auto wight balance/ brightness on most small camera's,in two minds about this .(good, well it,s auto ..bad ,i can't set the camera at just 1 level as light changes wile the robot moves and the cam adjusts with it ) ,like i said this is good and bad
• The Nootropic board is good but limited to a 2 bit image with a brightness threshold set by a potentiometer(the blue thing in the top left corner of the video board in the first pic)  ,so environment and lighting are important
• Environment, in the real world uneven and moving light will play havoc with setting a good threshold. to fix this i would need to build a custom environment with even lighting and only 2 colors (black and wight). If i were to make a custom environment , it would be possible to write line following code .(i just don't have the space/motivation to make such a thing :P )

it was kinder hard to get started but i used it like an array of digital light sensors  128 wide never bothered with the Y im not going to continue with this project i have done all i wanted at this point gleamed the chunk of knowledge i can add to something .ummm yes i am board

........PLEASE COMMENT  Thank you