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(Sound) & Vision

A project log for Autotron Pi Zero

This is a fork of the original Autotron Pi project - switching to RPi Zero W makes it more compact and more affordable at the same time

tomislav-preksavecTomislav Preksavec 03/29/2018 at 20:580 Comments

When you want to move around, the most important thing is to see where you're going. And the more you see, the better you move. Most robot cars these days use ultrasound sensors (hence the 'sound' in the title), but we're stuck with the 'vision' part from the beginning. Using the original Raspberry Pi 5MP camera was quite OK, but things did get in the way - things that we didn't see. So, we wanted to see some more.

First of all, we had to work on the FOV (Field Of View) issue: it was just a bit to narrow. So, we decided to test some other options, i.e. the wide angle RPi camera. And, well, there IS a difference! As you can see from the images below, you can see much more with the wide angle camera. Yes, the image is distorted, but there is soooo much more to see :-)

Regular camera view

Wide angle camera view

Sorry for the blurry pictures, it was not a perfect setup, but the difference is quite obvious...

The other thing that could help is NOT mounting the camera at the front of the car - although it is more immersive experience, it might be more convenient to mount it somewhere where the driver can see the front wheels. And anything that could get in the way of the wheels. So, that's something worth considering in the chassis design process.

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