Tracking Number
We show how to track objects and plot their movement using the Pixy camera and the Mathematica package that's included with Raspbian.
Exploring the Pixy sensor with Mathematica
Lead Image © lineartestpilot, 123RF.com
The Pixy camera [1] was developed at Carnegie Mellon University and is a fairly specialized vision sensor. Does it take gorgeous 10-megapixel photographs? No. It tracks things and sends data about the objects to microcontrollers, Raspberry Pis, Beagle Bones, and notebook computers.
Mathematica [2] is a data analysis and plotting package that's bundled into the Raspbian OS [3] on the Raspberry Pi. It can crunch numbers and help you visualize all kinds of trigonometric, calculus, and mathematical functions.
I wanted to develop a basic process to get data from the Pixy into Mathematica on the Raspberry Pi in preparation for more in-depth projects. The premise was to track an object with the Pixy and then plot the coordinates of the x and y data. In the future, I might want to suspend the Pixy over a robot arena and analyze bot movements or predict the path of a ping pong ball, as captured by the Pixy. I'm sure you are already thinking up ideas of your own. Exploring new ideas and tools requires prototyping and testing to get an understanding of what you have to work with.
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