my own spin on the Phantom X

[ahack3r]

Hey guys, I have just joined this website after finding your youtube channel, and from the looks of your products and forum, you are a Godsend before I purchase the Phantom X http://www.trossenrobotics.com/p/pha...ot-turret.aspx robot turret, I am wondering if its possible to buy everything in the kit excluding the plastic platform and the Roborealm license? I am interested in this because I want to develop my own computer vision software using OpenCV and I will be building my own platform. If so can I get this information?:

1. how well does openCV work on it?
2. what language works best for developing both autonomous and PC control code for it?
3. can I get links to all the seperate parts that are included in the kit?

thanks for the help.

[lnxfergy]

You'll notice, right on the page, there is a section "kit includes" which has the parts list (at least what can be purchased separately). The controller runs a simple program for communication with the PC -- you can communicate with it using any language that can open a serial port.

I don't believe anyone has used OpenCV with it directly (I do use OpenCV within ROS, and the ArbotiX does have an ROS wrapper), but if you're enough of a C/C++ programmer to make real use of OpenCV, interfacing to the ArbotiX should be a snap.

-Fergs

[ahack3r]

You'll notice, right on the page, there is a section "kit includes" which has the parts list (at least what can be purchased separately). The controller runs a simple program for communication with the PC -- you can communicate with it using any language that can open a serial port.

I don't believe anyone has used OpenCV with it directly (I do use OpenCV within ROS, and the ArbotiX does have an ROS wrapper), but if you're enough of a C/C++ programmer to make real use of OpenCV, interfacing to the ArbotiX should be a snap.

-Fergs

thanks for the info I've been reading up on ROS and its impressive...but not stable enough for me, how much progress do you expect to have completed on it by, say December?

[Adrenalynn]

ROS is being worked on by one of the foremost teams in robotics on the planet right now. Fergs has an interface from ROS to the arbotiX - he's not writing ROS. That'd be Willow Garage's team.

You would be an impressive programmer indeed if you could beat ROS' engineers to the punch, given their number, their head-start, and their pedigree! You might also consider applying there (along with the looooong line of other applications), it's a pretty sought-after place to work in the space.

[ahack3r]

very cool, are members of the ROS team forum members here?

[lnxfergy]

very cool, are members of the ROS team forum members here?

Core team members really don't visit here -- although several members of the forum are ROS users and developers of their own ROS-related software. There is a separate ros-users list maintained at ros.org (for announcements and support).

-Fergs

[ahack3r]

very cool, thanks for the info again. I have two more questions, if you don't mind:

1. what are your thoughts on developing Aforge.net with the Arbotix board?
2. in the video's of the Turrets, they are only shown tracking COLOR, is this the only method of motion tracking they are capable of out of the box?

[Adrenalynn]

dotNet will open a serial port just fine. So you can talk to the arbotiX all you like.

[ahack3r]

dotNet will open a serial port just fine. So you can talk to the arbotiX all you like.

awesome! after talking to people on the Arduino forums, I asked the same questions and they said that openCV or any motion tracking software would be too large for Arduino based microcontrollers to process and told me to look elsewhere I guess the Arbotix is the exception

[lnxfergy]

awesome! after talking to people on the Arduino forums, I asked the same questions and they said that openCV or any motion tracking software would be too large for Arduino based microcontrollers to process and told me to look elsewhere I guess the Arbotix is the exception

No. You're not going to run OpenCV on the ArbotiX -- or anything but an Intel based PC. What you can do is run OpenCV on a laptop/PC and then use the ArbotiX to interface the laptop/PC to your servos and other hardware. This is exactly what that demo of the PhantomX is doing -- except with roborealm on the PC rather than OpenCV. You would communicate with the ArbotiX over a serial port connection from your PC-side program (hence Adrenalynn's comment that dotNet can open serial port).

-Fergs