pic tracking oject

It is very hard, unless there is something to make the object extra visible. I did such a thing about 20 years ago, using a retroreflector mounted on the target, and a IR laser. There was a hardware gimbal system, which swung the beam in a classic 'line scan' pattern, and then the point with the strongest return was received, was then used as the centre of the next scan. The controlling processor for this, was a 4MHz Z80, and the same sort of approach could be handled by a PIC. Without the extra hardware to give a visible 'point', and to handle the scanning, the task is perhaps 1000* harder, and would require significant image processing, of the sort that the PIC is not really capable of handling.

Best Wishes

Can you put a transmitter on the moving object so that the objet sends its position ?

Tracking an object that doesn't have some kind of device (active or passive) on it and doesn't follow a predictable path isn't in a PIC capability.

Sylvain

Ok so I can=E8t really put a transmitter on the moving object so do I need to use a camera. If this is the case what sort of processor would I need to do the image processing ?=20

Thanks

P4

If your camera can follow it and the red dot is significantly brighter that the rest of the image, all you need to do is take the luminanz (Y) signal and the sync signals. There are specific chips to extract those signals from FBAS/Composite video signals, but it is also easy to do in discrete components. Now wait for the vertical sync signal, then start counting the horizontal syncs, and the cycles from the horizinatl sync until you find the bright dot. The number of HSyncs and the cycles from the last HSync give you the Y and X position of your dot.