Perform a wand wave

The main camera calibration process is achieved by waving the specified calibration device in the tracking volume. In general, try to wave the wand throughout the volume, ensuring that as many cameras as possible can see the wand at any one time.

To perform a wand wave:

1. Ensure you have completed the steps in Mask cameras.

2. In the Camera Calibration panel, in the Wand Wave section ensure the Advanced properties are displayed and select the calibration object to use for the camera calibration process (by default, this is Active Wand v2).

3. Click Wave All.

   The button displays Stop and in the menu bar, the menu bar changes color and the text Camera Calibration Active is displayed.

4. Have someone wave the wand throughout the capture volume, covering depth as well as height, while you watch the Cameras views for all cameras to ensure you get full coverage. Ensure that the markers (LEDs) on the wand remain visible to all the cameras as much as possible while the wand is moved throughout the volume.

   As an indication of the age of the wand detection, to help you see where the wand is being waved and getting detections, the display in each view changes from orange to blue.

   

   In the Camera Calibration panel, notice that the Wand Count column changes from red to green as sufficient data per camera is captured. The camera order also changes so that the cameras that the cameras with the lowest wand count are moved to the top of the list. This feedback helps you concentrate on waving the wand for cameras that need more data.

   Tip: By default, camera calibration stops automatically when each camera has seen enough of the wand to ensure calibration. To adjust this or turn it off, at the top right of the Wand Wave section, ensure Advanced properties is selected. To turn off the automatic stop, clear the Auto Stop check box. To adjust the amount of data needed before the camera calibration stops, change the value of Auto Stop Minimum Frames. Note that if you do this, the Wand Count column does not change color, and you will have to estimate when sufficient data has been captured.

5. After the wand wave has stopped, in the Image Error column, in addition to displaying the values, Tracker grades the status of each camera between red (poor) and green (excellent), depending on how well the camera can connect the centroids to the wand markers.

   

   In the volume, the status lights on the Vicon cameras turn magenta and blink during calibration, becoming green and then blue when fully calibrated.

After the wand wave, the cameras are calibrated relative to each other but the volume origin has not been set. You can do this in the next step (see Set up the volume).