Primary Calibration fiducial position & initial camera calibration experience.

[V Bruce Hunt]

Hi Mark,

I installed the test version of OpenPnP with the "Automatic Machine Calibration using Issues & Solutions".  Here is my experience:

1.  Performing the solution  on the Primary calibration fiducial position & initial camera calibration(PCFPICC) issue.  The instruction, "Adjust the Detected feature diameter up and down and see if it is detected right in the camera view." is difficult to understand. When I adjust the "Detected feature diameter"(DFD) an orange ring appears inside the fiducial spot along with a fuzzy orange and black doughnut that surrounds the  white fiducial spot.  As the DFD is adjusted, the orange ring changes diameter while the fuzzy doughnut shrinks and grows.  There are several interpretations of what "right" can mean here.  (e.g. The orange ring should be as small as possible; the ring should be as large as possible; the fuzzy doughnut should be as small as possible, etc.)  This is an unusual UI feature which I have only seen employed in this instance so how to interpret its use should be made explicit.

2.  I guessed that the orange ring should be made to touch the interior edge of the fidicual and used the resulting value to set the location in Reference Header, H1.

I pressed "Accept" and the head danced around the fiducial and ended with the error "Subject not found". 

3.  I next guessed that the fuzzy doughnut around the fiducial should be maximized.  I pressed "Accept" and the head once again danced around the fiducial and ended with the error "Subject not found".

4.  Guessed orange ring should be minimized.  Same dance as before, but error is "Circular symmetry stage: search range is cropped to nothing".

Enclosed is the log.

It looks to me like the failure occurs because the head moves the camera such that its view no longer contains the fiducial.  Perhaps the limits of the maximum dance diameter should be such that a detectable part of the fiducial remains in the viewspace of the camera.

/Bruce

[ma...@makr.zone]

Thanks for these valuable feed-backs.

1. Agree. I added "A green circle and cross-hairs should appear and hug the fiducial contour. Zoom the camera using the scroll-wheel." I've also added more info to the linked Wiki page. You know the button (the lower one) will bring you there, right?
   
   From the video:
   
   
   
2. - 4. Ouch! You certainly got mislead. I'm sorry! I will think about a better feedback that shows the circle alone and shows it in different color even if it gets no match yet.
   

_Mark

Btw. you can always send me better sentences, not being a native speaker, this is quite difficult for me.

_Mark

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[ma...@makr.zone]

Hi Bruce,

I've quickly fixed that and deployed a new testing version. You could upgrade and report back.

The details:

https://github.com/openpnp/openpnp/pull/1257

_Mark

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/openpnp/8928e9f2-a0e7-d06c-2c88-e42fc63db013%40makr.zone.

[V Bruce Hunt]

Hi Mark!

Thanks and wow!  Happy to supply a sentence or two as long as you keep inventing! :-)

Will install and report back.  Off on business trip next week.  Hope to be back in action causing trouble on Friday.

/Bruce

[V Bruce Hunt]

I installed the test version with the new UI.  The default 20 pixels barely shows a tiny green blotch ( technical term for so tiny all I can see is a green smear;-)  )  on my LitePlacer which disappears after about a second.  By increasing the pixel diameter well beyond the 20 pixel mark I got increasingly large smears, I finally get the full green circle with cross hairs at about 40 pixels which also momentarily disappears.  However,  it locks on at 46 pixels and stays.  I never see any orange dashed circle, but I approached from smaller to larger pixel diameters.  Once it locked on, I accepted it and it danced around and SUCCESSFULLY concluded.  Very nice and happy.

I printed out the fiducial using the linked PDF file and printer and measured it to be about 1.5 mm in diameter.  Does this effect mean that I should reduce the fiducial print down to 1mm and retry? 

I think it would be better if:

1.  The UI interface does not disappear. (Possibly my error in having too-big a fiducial?)

2.  There is a visual change as well as a color change between smaller, near equal, and larger diameters.  A large fraction of males are red-green color vision impaired so may be unable to distinguish only a color changing in the green-orange-red color area.

Never-the-less, it is working on my LitePlacer and excellent progress is being made.

I will repeat playing around with this to see if I can observe the orange dashed circle and to see if the momentary display is related to camera frame rate ( now at 7).

Thanks for all your hard work!

/Bruce

[ma...@makr.zone]

Hi Bruce

> shows a tiny green blotch ( technical term for so tiny all I can see is a green smear;-)  ) 

Have you zoomed the camera view like it says in the instructions?

> measured it to be about 1.5 mm in diameter.  Does this effect mean that I should reduce the fiducial print down to 1mm and retry? 

No, that's fine. The 20 Pixel start value is just a wild guess anyway.

Note, when you see it's way too small or way too large, you can also type a number into the text field there, no need to increment/decrement with the arrow buttons one at a time.

> I never see any orange dashed circle

I changed the threshold at which the fiducial is detected, however because you are an early adopter, you will still have the old setting in your machine.xml.

If you want to test the user experience with the newest settings, you need to exit OpenPnP, open the machine.xml and delete these two sections at the end of the file, be very careful to exactly delete from <visual-solutions to (and including) </calibration-solutions>:

Save and restart OpenPnP.

Insight: there is this setting min-symmetry that sets the threshold, i.e. where it turns from green to red. But I have since changed other settings too, so best delete the whole sections.

Sorry about the machine.xml hacking, but that's the bane of you brave early testers! I'm quite confident that when these settings are mature, they will only very rarely have to be tweaked.

> I think it would be better if:
> 1.  The UI interface does not disappear.

I agree, but it would be technically much more involved to make this happen. I would have to keep track of the user focus. With Issues & Solutions aiming to be completely modeless for good reason, this is not so easy.

> 2.  There is a visual change as well as a color change between smaller, near equal, and larger diameters.  A large fraction of males are red-green color vision impaired so may be unable to distinguish only a color changing in the green-orange-red color area.

That's why I made it dashed too and no cross-hairs. Even if you don't see color (simulated below), it's quite clear, right?

vs.

Green and red are still the international traffic light colors for "good to go" and "better stop and think". Any other color that I can think of, would be confusing for the rest of the users 😉

vs.

_Mark

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