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I have always thought that LEGO should have built the Vision Command camera housing such that the focus could be motorized. I know I'm not the only one ... In this thread, Bob Fay (of LEGO milling machine fame) suggests using half of a large Technic (...) (22 years ago, 13-Dec-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | Re: Working motorized focus for Vision Command
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I was wondering if anybody would improve the power focus for the Lego camera. You have accomplished this very well. I especially like your tilt drive. Sticking that 40 tooth gear without glue is super. Congratulations! Bob Fay (URL) Haye" (...) (22 years ago, 13-Dec-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | Re: Working motorized focus for Vision Command
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This may be a stupid question, but could the vision command be made to "autofocus" given special code? Timothy (...) (22 years ago, 15-Dec-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | Re: Working motorized focus for Vision Command
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anyone?? (...) (22 years ago, 17-Dec-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | Re: Working motorized focus for Vision Command
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(...) Well, I'm not an expert - but I imagine it should be possible to produce a measure of how sharp the image is. For example by adding up all the differences between one pixel and it's neighbours. In a sharp image, you'd expect a lot of nice high (...) (22 years ago, 18-Dec-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | Re: Working motorized focus for Vision Command
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Thanks for replying! I was thinking of the same procedure. But to help with the varried depth problem, a small part of the viewed area could be selected to be the focusing point. So overall, it must be possible, right? Timothy (...) (22 years ago, 18-Dec-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | Re: Working motorized focus for Vision Command
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(...) Yes - that'll also make the algorithm run faster. (...) I'm sure it's possible. What I'm not sure about is whether the kind of naive algorithm that I could come up with after just a few minutes thought would be effective. It might take some (...) (22 years ago, 18-Dec-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | Re: Working motorized focus for Vision Command
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I have no idea how to access the camera from a programming language, nor do I have any experience in raw vision proccessing. Do you know how to do any of these previously meantioned? Timothy (...) (22 years ago, 18-Dec-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | Re: Working motorized focus for Vision Command
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(...) No problem. The VC camera is a repacked Logitech. You can get a free quickcam SDK from the Logitech homepage. With that, you can program the camera under Windows. If you want to use Linux, things get a bit more complicated. You could use (...) (22 years ago, 18-Dec-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | Re: Working motorized focus for Vision Command
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(...) Timothy, One source of inspiration for the focusing algorithm is to look at codes that expand the depth of focus by stitching together the in-focus portions of multiple images. This is used in microscopy quite a bit. The software has to be (...) (22 years ago, 18-Dec-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | Re: Working motorized focus for Vision Command
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But how to I "weave" the SDK and the algorithms IN VC++? I am only wondering if this idea of an autofocusing lego cam is feasible. One day I may learn enough VC++ to be able to acomplish this project :-) I'm glad to know there is hope! Timothy (...) (22 years ago, 18-Dec-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | Re: Working motorized focus for Vision Command
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(...) from one end to another taking pictures as you go, and selecting the best parts of each, you'd end up with better-than-perfect focussing. I guess you'd want to be careful to mount the camera very rigidly so it doesn't wobble as you drive the (...) (22 years ago, 19-Dec-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | Re: Working motorized focus for Vision Command
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(...) That would sure help make the image processing faster, but techniques do exist for image registration (e.g. (URL) This is often required for MRI or electron microsope images since the movement of the apparatus affects the image scale, skew and (...) (22 years ago, 19-Dec-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | Re: Working motorized focus for Vision Command
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Sorry for the late reply ... consumer still cameras (even cheap ones) have auto-focus capability, so the technology has to be within reach of the RCX. I did a search on Google and found the following definitions: Active auto-focus is where the (...) (22 years ago, 19-Dec-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | Re: Working motorized focus for Vision Command
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(...) If you download the SDK you will also get some demo programs. They will run with VC++ and show how to get a video stream to a window and how to use the motion detection feature of the camera driver. The demos don't help much for Kylix/Linux (...) (22 years ago, 19-Dec-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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