Tested my Trackit yesterday and one of the biggest problems I encountered was the lack of an option to control the trackers dual axis gimbal from the Scanning software (physical buttons would be even nicer).
I wanted to scan something laying on the floor and there is no way to swifel the tracker down (except buying an aftermarket ball head).
Please give us the feature to simply control the gimbal from within the software in preparation of the scan (whilst also maybe providing a full screen preview of the camera feed of the tracker with a bounding box of the potential tracking area? I guess it depends on how well the IR can light the tracking area).
Another more advanced implementation would be following:
In multi-position mode the tracker can be moved while scanning (you don’t even need to pause the scan).
Why not use this feature and the already existing dual axis gimbal of the tracker to increase the possible tracking area?
Something like: Long press the M-button on the scanner and the tracker uses the gimbal to center itself to the scanner? Would be awesome and increase the workflow immensely.
The scanning would have to pause during head moment if you wanted to keep any form of accuracy. With the most ridged gimbal with the highest resolution encoders it would never be able to resolve the movements of your hand. the scan would have to pause and wait until the gimbal movement and shaking and ringing in the tripod stopped and then it could start scanning again.
I know you are thinking that it is working off of the markers to get its location but it can only do this so many times a second and i don’t think they are doing this at the same rate as the scan so those small movements between frames add up
I mean in the multi position mode with reference markers on the scanned object and the repositioning of the tracker itself may take only a few seconds so a small pause is no problem
not criticizing ( I personally think its a fantastic feature I would imagine it was on the list of features but might have been a bridge to far for time/budget) but theorizing about how it would be done, the other issue i see is what actually controls the gimbal is it the software on the PC or is it some firmware in the tracker head if its in the tracker head is it on a microprocessor or FPGA or a ASIC or a combination is there enough meat left in one of these to add this functionality skip the ASIC they cant change
P.S. the othe issue is there is a power and heat dissipation budget. Bugger i’m having flashbacks! where is the RUM
PPS that would involve firmware upgrades across multiple devices and multiple uc and FPGA without bricking them FxxCK im going to need more RUM
Valid points but I guess it mainly gets controlled from the pc software.
Regarding heat: I don’t talk about continuos movements.
As a user story:
As a user of the scanner
I want to be able to pause the scanning in multi-position mode and long press the M-button
so that the tracker gets centered on the scanner by moving the dual axis gimble.
with embedded development there are more limitations than the normal software development route and im not talking about arduinos etc. to give you an idea (not saying this is how it is but just a example ) say they have finalized the design and they know there chip IO budget and the maximum number of hardware timers they need so they then select the chip based on this say that chip is multiple functions on the hand scanner eg power, temperature monitoring and monitoring the control pad now say we want to implement your long press button function. How dose it know you have held the button long enough well it will use a hardware timer to trigger a interrupt at the correct time but now all the hardware interrupts are being used so now it will just have to pas that back along to the pc and it will have to be delt with there
Put it this way i have seen some major bodges in my time with embedded best/worst i have seen is a certain global company that had a sensor array divan by a ancient 8 bit processor 74HC11 the wanted to have more memory and Ethernet for faster downloads after use so instead of a board redesign the literally hobbled a 32bit SBC running Linux to on top of the 8bit uc to pretend it is the memory and swap memory locations every time it runs out of the 8 bit address space now this bit of hardware sits in 15000psi pressure case will experience 12g of acceleration deceleration and operates at 125 deg C and they wonder why they are losing business
yes i understand what you are getting at and there is more than one way to skin a cat. I am just trying to point out that it just might not be possible to do on what it currently is. its a good idea
Now iv got to watch cat videos to deal with the pent up rage of decades of dealing with massive corporations Milatery, Oil and Gas, coms they are all the same
The gimbals used only for calibration , not usable while scanning .
You can’t move the Tracker while scanning , neither the object when using the Tracker mode , the other mode pause the scanning while moving the Tracker to next section , so definitely just waste of time and money because it will not set the Tracker in the proper position anyway when you scan big objects .
That will not work , and you going to lose the part of the scan you already made, multi position mode is a real time merge function between the already scanned part sections, markers and a new scan . The Tracker is locked in one position after you press the scanning button and can’t be moved or centered . That would require to change completely the concept and how it process the scanning including firmware.
I don’t saying it can’t be done because possibilities are there for many different things. But I don’t expect any of it will be changed in already released new product that was in production for almost one year.
I can’t go into details because of my NDA, but lots of things was changed and added since the early development , before anybody knows about it’s existence.
Wobble of the gimbals ? I am scanning since last December and never had any wobble or running of the scan , is your floor shaking ? That can be an issue
Ball-Head for the Tracker is a must have , I use it with every scanner anyway .
Induced by slight movements of the cable since it is a bit too short for max distance and increased by tolerances of the gimbal I guess:
With the dual axis gimbal:
Yeah that can be a problem with the cable being pulled . I guess a proper extension for the “too short” cable would be a solution or a sturdy Ball-Head that I am using as well.
Good examples Philipp, thanks for sharing your suggestions !
Again my crude drawing for an extension cable. I also highlighted the zip-ties used to secure the cable to prevent the propagation of movement from the cable to the tracker itself (problem increased when using the dual axis gimble).
When the cable has enough slack it is no problem, but as soon as the cable has no slack (in my case being at the extreme of the 4 range) small movements get induced in the tracker. An extension would eliminate this problem.
Here are some example scans to highlight the problem:
Bad example with cable in the air due to length and tracker mounted on gimbal:
