Hey all,
I’ve successfully built my Pixy, and I’ve gotten the object tracking working, but I don’t see a video feed at all whenever I run the Pan/Tilt demo. I’m working on a Mac, and I normally see the video feed on every other mode available in Pixymon.
Am I seeing the proper behavior? Or should I not be able to see the video feed while doing tracking?
Thanks.
Hi KP,
The default setting is to have video off during tracking. You should be able to click the “cooked video” icon to see what Pixy sees.
Scott
Hey Scott,
When I click cooked video, all motion tracking stops. The same thing goes for the uncooked video. I’m guessing that isn’t desired behavior then?
Is there source for the Mac version of Pixymon available yet to take a look?
Thanks!
I’m having this same problem; Mac version. I start the Pan Tilt demo in PixyMon and get some twitches from the servos and one time had a work briefly, but then it stopped. I see a black screen with a moving box that tracks the profiled object.
I saw the same behavior on Mac
I’m also seeing this behavior on a mac (running mavericks.) Pixymon defaults to a black view, but I can into the cooked video by clicking the icon. However, I can’t get the servos to do more than twitch upon starting the pan/tilt demo. I’m using a short (3 ft) USB cable. The usb port on the pixy seems rather fragile; moving the cable just a tad throws the error:
CCB1 frame data
error: Pixy has stopped working.
Pixy detected.
CCB1 frame data
I’ll try tomorrow on a different computer with a new cable…but this is my main laptop, so if it is mac related, please report back any fixes!
I see the same behavior on win7. Tracking works for a very short time, if at all then stops. The last day or two I cannot get it to move more than a twitch.
Hi all,
Sorry for my late reply. What Mac version are all of you running? I’ll look in to this tonight or tomorrow at the latest.
Thanks.
Scott
OSX Mavericks and PixyMon version 0.1.41 BETA
I’m using Win7 and have the same problem. When I’m running the pan/tilt demo and click either the raw or cooked button in pixymon, pixy stops moving. Using V0.1.47
Would like to get video + pan/tilt working.
Thanks!
Wait!! The black view is the default view. Normally Pixy doesn’t send full video-- it only sends what it detects, their signatures and their sizes. This shows up as boxes, labeled by signature on a black background (no video). The raw and cooked video is mostly for debugging.
For the pan/tilt demo, you also get the default view (object blocks, signatures and sizes— boxes on black background.)
Hope this helps clear up the confusion!
I’m having the same issue, running Win7.
When I click “Run pan/tilt demo” through Pixymon, it takes me to the (default) black view. Pixy will pan and tilt to track objects and I can see their outline while on the black screen, but the moment I switch to raw or cooked video, Pixy stops panning and tilting. It is still tracking the object, i.e. I can still see the boxed outline around the object, but no more physical following occurs =(
Yes— the pan/tilt demo is a Pixy program that controls the pan and tilt servos such that it tracks objects.
Raw and cooked video are also programs, but they do not control the pan and tilt servos.
Can you view raw or cooked video while tracking objects with the pan/tilt?
No. Raw and cooked video are meant as debugging tools — that is, they answer the question “what is my Pixy seeing?” Streaming raw video over USB requires resources (like framestore memory) that are not available when performing object tracking on Pixy.
If performing object detection and streaming raw/cooked video is too intensive for Pixy to handle at the same time, then I’m okay with that considering it is a limitation of the device.
However, if object detection can be performed while streaming raw/cooked video (during the pan/tilt demo), but it simply isn’t enabled then that is a big miss. Even if streaming raw/cooked video were initially meant as debugging tools, showing someone Pixy’s capabilities live on a monitor (while it is tracking an object with the pan/tilt demo) would make for a very impactful demo.
So, apart from just the comment, I’d be interested to know: is this a hardware limitation or is this just a feature that was overlooked?
Yikes. It’s a RAM and CPU limitation. We can’t grab a frame AND perform color blob analysis. Grabbing a frame takes lots of RAM and requires that we later process the entire frame. Pixy processes the pixel stream as it comes in and only saves the “interesting” pixels for the M4 to process later. This saves lots of RAM and CPU.
In raw and cooked modes, we are simply grabbing frames and streaming them over USB. Cooked mode actually performs color blob analysis on the PC side. (It’s cooked!)
Having said all this, it’s still possible to do traditional grabframe/processframe. But no backbuffers means that things are sort of constrained to 25 fps. We expect face detection will be a traditional grabframe/processframe algorithm.
Enjoying using my pixy with dynamixel servos but it would be awesome to see the video and use it for stablization/centering of footage. How is the video being captured in the kickstarter video at 3:44?
Hi James,
I’m guessing the video you are referring to was being displayed in Pixymon, and then Rich just used a screen recorder to capture it. Then he probably cropped the video to just show Pixy’s video output.
Scott
So the video was recorded while manually moving the Pixy left to right ?
This is certainly somewhat miss-leading.
I spent a full hour assembling the Pixy pant/tilt with my 11 years cousin,
to then see him asking “why don’t we see the video when the camera moves ?”.
If keeping high FPS is the issue, it would be most welcome to have an option to:
This would make a much more compelling demonstration in my opinion.
Any chance of seeing this implemented ?
Hi Rodrigo,
I think you misunderstood what I was explaining. In the video, Pixy is tracking the ball using a trained color signature and moves to keep it in frame using the servos. A person was not manually moving Pixy to keep the ball in frame. This same demo can be done with the Pixy you have.
In my previous post I was referring to the way the video from Pixy was recorded on Rich’s computer.
Please let me know if you have any other questions I can clarify.
Scott
This same demo can be done with the Pixy you have.
Please let me know if you have any other questions I can clarify.
This brings us back to the question of the thread, how can such demo be setup?
Pixymon seems not to do it out of the box.