Re: [Playerstage-developers] PTZ and MCom changes

[john s. <sw...@cs...>]

brian gerkey wrote:

> Funny you should mention that, because I've just been thinking about making
> some changes to the ptz interface.  What kind of things are you doing to
> the Sony unit with SendConfig?
> 

Hey Brian --

We wanted to use it to control the iris settings and white balance I 
believe; I'm not the one actually using the Sony, but I think they 
wanted to control that sort of thing.  I can't recall off hand, but I 
think you could send movement commands using SendConfig as well...

> I'm writing a driver at the moment for the Amtec PowerCube Wrist, which is
> a fancy, industrial-strength pan-tilt unit that can, for instance, carry
> a SICK.  And something that I need to really use this unit is velocity
> control of the pan and tilt.  The current ptz interface is just position
> control, so I'll probably add velocities to it.
> 

Someone in my lab was looking into PT units for our SICK, but I'm not 
sure what one they liked.  Have you played with the Amtec enough to 
recommend it?

> Some people might also find it nicer to control the Sony PTZ with
> velocities, especially for continually sweeping back and forth.
> 

It's funny you should mention that, as one thing I didn't mention in my 
email, but wrote in the changelog was that I had added some code to the 
sony driver to try and implement a more smooth movement mode, but it's 
pretty lame and right now is a very underdamped proportional controller. 
  So I'm all for velocity control in there.

john