Hi,
Looks like a real cool and fun project. Great work! The CMU cams looks interesting. Did you also consider or have any experience with the cmucam3? Face tracking would be awesome! (especially for hexapods).
Yes- The CMUcam3 is on my list of future projects. I still have a lot of work to go on X-BRAT but I’m tempted to put a CMUcam3 on a Jonny5…Have to decide soon as the sale ends tomorrow!
Mark
I have this idea where I get the original X-Rover going as well as the new X-Rover…then I set them both to track each other…should like like they are playing…
Mark
A CMUcam3 on a Jonny5 sounds like a great project!
Sale! Where? 
Lynxmotion is having a 14% off sale on everything this weekend…today is the last day!
Here is the link to the sale…it ends tomorrow at 8AM I think so today is the last day!!!
Hi Mark,
I had some problems uploading my new vids to. There was some maintenance going on at YouTube. I still have a vid on the queue that I hope to upload this evening.
Did you deside on your next project already?
Xan
Yes there was a youtube problem but I also had a cable modem problem that wouldn’t let me upload or download more then 5Meg at a time…all is fixed now!
I’m waiting on proper batteries for X-Rover…he is completely powered by only one set of AA batteries now (since that is the only 12V pack I have now) so in all the videos the voltage starts drooping and you can see him loose track a few times when he shouldn’t. Not a problem with sub-c packs…I have this tested on my 7.2V rover.
mark
Ok, I thought you ment there was a sale on the CMUcam3… 
Jim asked me to make a video where X-Rover chases the RC-car but doesn’t crash into it so much. I tweaked the code (just 2 constants) to make the rover stay farther away from the RC-Car.
Next I plan to mount one or two airsoft guns on X-Rover and have it do some autonomous target practice!
Mark
Mark you look like you are having way too much fun with that! It was interesting to see it ignore the car when the ball was being tracked. Very cool implementation! 8)
Thanks Jim, this is definetly one of my favorits. I can’t wait until you build your’s. One of the nice things is that it only takes a few constant tweaks in order to either subtely or radically change it’s behavior. Quite often I still get surprised by it’s behavior and X-Rover seems to invent games to play with me 
You are right…the way the tracking works is that it will lock on to a particular object while tracking. It is interesting to try and confuse him with several balls…maybe I’ll put up a video of that sometime. He usualy just chooses one of them to track even when the are all in range.
You can see at one point in the video that the ball rolls by when he is tracking the car. You can see X-Rovers head look at the ball momentarily and go back to tracking the car.
Sometimes X-Rover can bounce the ball to himself and play ball by himself but this only happens once in a while. There are so many kinds of emergent behaviors that I swear X-Rover just ‘wants’ to play!
Mark
This is the best tracking code I have seen. It looks like it truly has a mind of its own.
Thanks Mike!
I swear sometimes X-Rover does have a mind of his own and I struggle to understand some of the cool emergent behaviors. They are very fun to watch. Even though this robot is quite simple at the moment it will be easy to add other sensors which will greatly increase the funcionality and complexty of the behaviors. I hopful we have a fun easy platform for others to build on. There is just so much more that can be done with this scheme and I haven’t even begun to tap the potential of the CMUcam2.
Now I’m faced with the daunting task of digging through the Mech BRAT code so I can understand it at a deep enough level to add my autonomous and tracking routines to X-BRAT. This is the hard and fun part of the project! As usual I will post updates as I progress on the X-BRAT thread.
I don’t yet have an ETA of the tutorial but I have most of my part written. If anyone would like an early copy so you can get going on your own X-Rover project Idrop me a PM and I can send you what I have so far. That and the code should be more then enough to get anyone who has built at least one lynxmotion robot before.
When the tutorial is complete it should be in a from where even a beginner could build one following the instructions…I hope!
Mark
Very nice indeed Mark!
I can just see a CMUCam on a Micromouse, chasing another mouse through the maze!
Alan KM6VV
When I get the chance I’m going to set up the old yellow X-Rover and the new black X-Rover to chase each other…should be very interesting to see what would happen!
Mark
Make them play tag! Just what I had in mind for my Micromice!
You probably said, but where are you processing the camera data? All on the CMU CAM?
Alan KM6VV
All the hard stuff is done by the CMUcam2…then I set it up so it pairs down the image manipulation functions and only sends me the x/y cooridantes of the center of mass of the object. The x/y coordinates are then sent to the ATOM Pro for processing. It is all explained in the tutorial. If you looke at the code I posted you should be able to figure out most of what is going on.
Mark
I was just looking at your code. Thanks for posting!
So CMUcam just sends a stream of tracking X,Y values, and your pan the camera to track. And then the 'bot follows the camera.
I like it! I knew of the CMUcam (HBRobotics holds meetings at CMU!), I hadn’t gotten around to getting one. There is also a CMU ‘3’ out.
Thanks for the info!
Alan KM6VV