This week, our team made significant progress towards our MVP and beyond and we are nearing the level of work we planned to have done for our interim demo.
Firstly, we were able to resolve the camera color issue that has been plaguing our camera-to-FPGA-to-monitor path. This represented a significant risk to our project as correct color output is critical to both the quality of the projected image as well as our chroma-keying algorithms. With the help of an oscilloscope we acquired this week, we were able to find and resolve the issues and now have correct color output working (see Breyden Wood’s status report here for more details).
Secondly, we were also able to construct a full-scale prototype of our pyramid that will be placed on the TV for our illusion to work. When scaling up from 1:2 we ran into an issue with the materials distorting too much, but we were able to resolve this by fixing a cardboard lid to the top of the pyramid. This not only provides much better structural rigidity but also improves contrast and clarity as well.
Finally, we have begun implementing the image filters we plan to use on the FPGA in Python. While it is not written in Verilog (and thus is not synthesizable), this allows us to quickly verify and tweak our algorithms prior to writing them onto the FPGA. More details on both this and the pyramid construction can be found in Grace An’s status report here.
We have identified a significant risk of chromatic noise in the output of the OV7670 cameras, which threatens the video frame quality we can achieve from our final project. To mitigate chromatic noise, we will ensure that our live studio is lit up as brightly as possible, as the OV7670 cameras’ chromatic noise vary with lighting. We will also change our design to include a simple noise reduction image filter in hardware, which may replace (or add onto) our sharpness filter in the image signal processing module. We also changed the design of our holographic pyramid by adding a cardboard top in order to straighten the pyramid sides and dim the area within the pyramid to improve quality of reflected images. This change in design does not add to the cost of our project as cardboard is readily available.
Some tasks in the schedule have shuffled due to the previously mentioned issues, although not in any way that threatens our MVP. Debugging the color scheme issue took up much of the past two weeks. Image filters were worked on this week instead of the live studio construction, which will occur the following week. Our updated schedule is shown below:
