This week, I worked on integrating the entire pipeline together. I went over to Jullia’s place where the entire setup is currently assembled. Jullia and I worked together to set up the TV and the pyramid by moving the TV flat on the table. I also mounted the cameras into the studio after the holes in the studio were cut out. There was some adjustment needed after the cameras were mounted into the studio regarding the orientation of the video footage. I adjusted these issues through Quartus so that the video footage faced the correct direction and displayed correctly on the pyramid and TV setup. Testing also revealed some memory bugs with lines of incorrect colors showing at the bottom or top of the square of projected images. I resolved this error by changing the SystemVerilog code to remove these lines.
Some of the cameras also needed to be switched out due to differences in auto-exposure and white balance. This was previously identified as an issue last week, and we were able to fix it with the new cameras we purchased this week. As mentioned in the Team’s status report, longer wires resulted in greater electrical noise, so we had to place the FPGA and Arduino at the bottom of the pyramid (instead of above it). The wires are extremely sensitive and any slight adjustment of the studio results in the wires getting loose. This creates a lot of noise on the video feed and I have had to adjust these connectivities using tweezers from time to time.
I spent the bulk of my time adjusting lighting and the parameters for the chroma key algorithm to ensure optimal background removal (with a uniform background). As synthesized, the chroma-key algorithm takes in an RGB value and threshold setting for sensitivity. I carefully adjusted the RGB values while adjusting the lighting for the studio for the evenest lighting and best possible background removal.
I also captured video footage of our project using my personal camera and tripod. I took wide-angle shots, video footage, and close-up photographs. This footage will be used in the final presentation as well as the later final demo. I also did latency testing using the remote for the studio lighting, determining that our project has ~21 ms of latency (much better than our initial requirement of several hundred ms).
I am on track with our schedule. The project is fully integrated, testing has been started, and I have taken extensive amounts of footage for our final video. Over the next day, I will practice the final presentation, which Grace and Jullia will provide feedback on. Over the next week, I will work with Grace and Jullia to finish testing and adjustment of the final project as well as work on the final video.