A 2-axis, 4-button "joystick" using the Driver Station's webcam for the FIRST Robotics Competition.

This Python script uses your laptop's webcam and OpenCV to get a 2-axis, 4-button joystick during autonomous mode. The values are sent to the cRIO and what you do with it is up to you!

When you start the program you will need to enter your team number so we can find the IP of your cRIO. You will then have to select two vision targets of distinct colours, I used red and blue stress balls. It is important to pick something which will be a distinct colour from the background. To calibrate your two vision targets use the two calibration windows that should pop up. Use the minH and maxH sliders to select a range of hue values to segment your target from the background. One of your targets will then act as a two axis joystick, and the other will activate the four buttons at the bottom. The values of your configuration are saved to the file 'parameters.yaml' so that they should persist between runs. Note that hue is strongly effected by the lighting conditions of your room, so you may need to adjust the values every time you change rooms, and ESPECIALLY under the arena lights at the competition venue. To quit press 'esc' in the webcam window.

Enjoy!

I have provided two ways of running it:

1. I have bundled this into a standalone exe. Grab the VisualJoystick_win.zip, extract it and inside run visualjoystick.exe. I bundled this with cx_freeze on my Windows 7, AMD x86 machine. I make no claims that this will work on all machines since I'm a linux guy and Windows development seems like BlackMagic~.
2. If the bundled exe doesn't work, or you want to modify the source then you'll need to install the following stuff:
3. Python 2.7 https://www.python.org/download/
4. Numpy http://sourceforge.net/projects/numpy/files/
5. OpenCV - this one is a bit tricky, once you've run the installer you need to copy this file: opencv\build\python\2.7\x86\cv2.pyd to C:\Python27\Lib\site-packages http://sourceforge.net/projects/opencvlibrary/files/opencv-win/
6. YAML http://pyyaml.org/wiki/PyYAML

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