PixyVision

Info

• We modified the code that came with the Pixy Camera starter files which is why the folder names and organization is weird, hello_pixy was supposed to be the C++ starter project and libpixyusb_swig was supposed to be the python starter project.
• This repository contains two folders, hello_pixy which contains code to interact with the pixycam through the C++ api and libpixyusb_swig which contains code to interact with the pixycam through the python api.
• Both were necessary when we tried to use the camera since we could not change the camera settings through the python code for some reason. Therefore in hello_pixy/hello_pixy.cpp we set the brightness, exposure and white balance of the camera.
• Next our python code in libpixyusb_swig/get_blocks.py sets up a network socket and transmits frame number, signature, width, height, x and y of the targets to the robot through the network socket. Network sockets are used because they are easy to implement in both Python and Java.

Usage

• First follow the PixyCam documentation and set up a raspberry pi with the libraries for both the python and C++ APIs for the pixy
• Next run the hello_pixy/build.sh script to build the hello_pixy binary, the script also moves the binary to the libpixyusb_swig folder
• Then run the libpixyusb_swig/start_vision.sh script which runs the get_blocks.py script which in turn runs the hello_pixy binary and starts transmitting the detected targets over the network socket.

Stuff that should be fixed

• This repository needs a .gitignore, it's full of build files and artifacts that shouldn't have been pushed.
• A more organized way of building and running everything which should probably be a Makefile or something similar but I didn't know how to use those when I first made these scripts.