Sensor calibration: Custom method and calibration blob

In the last few days, I've been working on getting a basic sensor data filtering infrastructure set up. In addition to that, I've added support for getting and storing the calibration data that is saved on the controller (the axis naming is a bit different in the PS Move API compared to what you will find on that Wiki page). In addition to the factory-set calibration data, I've also implemented support for a "custom" calibration scheme where the user has to do a 6-point tumble test, which will be used as anchor points for calibration.

The custom calibration scheme works a bit like "mccalibrate" from linmctool, but has (at the moment) a bit simpler algorithm (taking the average over 200 sensor readings). The new calibration tool that I wrote (c/calibrate.c) can detect if you have moved your controller too much while the readings were taken, and will ask you to do the given position again. A custom calibration could look like this (I've moved the controller a lot for the first "buttons up" reading to demo the move detector code):

~S/psmove/psmoveapi% build/calibrate 
Serial number: 04:76:6e:XX:XX:XX
Put the controller in the position 'bulb up' and press the Move button
All readings done for bulb up.
bulb up:
a (avg:     1 |  4359 |   188)
a (dev:    20 |    13 |    43)
m (avg:     2 |    -8 |  -421)
m (dev:     4 |     8 |     5)

Put the controller in the position 'bulb down' and press the Move button
All readings done for bulb down.
bulb down:
a (avg:  -165 | -4379 |  -113)
a (dev:    30 |    20 |    48)
m (avg:   -69 |   287 |  -435)
m (dev:     5 |    10 |     5)

Put the controller in the position 'buttons up' and press the Move button
All readings done for buttons up.
buttons up:
a (avg:   177 |    62 |  4173)
a (dev:  3940 |  2079 |   987)
m (avg:   -34 |    57 |  -250)
m (dev:    22 |    16 |     6)



  DEVIATION TOO HIGH - PLEASE RETRY

Put the controller in the position 'buttons up' and press the Move button
All readings done for buttons up.
buttons up:
a (avg:   -41 |   358 |  4362)
a (dev:    22 |    19 |    19)
m (avg:   -29 |    77 |  -250)
m (dev:     5 |    10 |     5)

Put the controller in the position 'buttons down' and press the Move button
All readings done for buttons down.
buttons down:
a (avg:  -128 |   422 | -4343)
a (dev:    28 |    21 |    25)
m (avg:   -61 |    84 |  -515)
m (dev:     5 |    10 |     7)

Put the controller in the position 'buttons left' and press the Move button
All readings done for buttons left.
buttons left:
a (avg:  4252 |   188 |    63)
a (dev:    38 |    41 |    49)
m (avg:    96 |    76 |  -392)
m (dev:     4 |    13 |     8)

Put the controller in the position 'buttons right' and press the Move button
All readings done for buttons right.
buttons right:
a (avg: -4458 |   338 |   -82)
a (dev:    26 |    24 |    35)
m (avg:  -187 |    85 |  -369)
m (dev:     5 |    13 |     6)

Now that we have done a calibration run, we need a tool to display the results (also, we need a tool that reads the data from USB and stores it): Enter "dump_calibration". This tool will read and persist all calibration blobs of connected USB controllers (the "calibrate" tool will only store custom calibration, and only for Bluetooth controllers). When run with a Bluetooth controller (and again assuming that you have already done the USB fetching part), you can get output like this:

~S/psmove/psmoveapi% build/dump_calibration 
File: /Users/thp/.psmoveapi/04_76_6e_XX_XX_XX.calibration.txt
Flags: 3
Have USB calibration:
10 00 67 07 4f 7f a4 7f c2 90 68 6e 25 80 05 80
60 7f 10 80 bf 6e 75 90 c6 7f c5 7f c1 7f bb 90
33 80 47 7f c7 6e 90 7f d2 08 db 7f 57 80 47 80
d7 07 d2 7f 58 80 4b 80 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
00 01 ce 08 e0 01 04 97 53 80 5b 80 e0 01 cc 7f
7b 90 39 80 e0 01 dd 7f 4d 80 64 94 f4 07 d1 d7
12 41 72 fc d0 c0 c9 3e 0d c2 a4 1c 6f 3f a9 90
7b 3f 37 5c 71 3f 02 1d 32 3f 87 69 a1 3d 00 00
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
# Orientation #0: ( -177 |   -92 |  4290)
# Orientation #1: (-4504 |    37 |     5)
# Orientation #2: ( -160 |    16 | -4417)
# Orientation #3: ( 4213 |   -58 |   -59)
# Orientation #4: (  -63 |  4283 |    51)
# Orientation #5: ( -185 | -4409 |  -112)
# Gyro X, 80 rpm: ( 5892 |    83 |    91)
# Gyro Y, 80 rpm: (  -52 |  4219 |    57)
# Gyro Z, 80 rpm: (  -35 |    77 |  5220)
# byte at 0x3F: 00

Have custom calibration:
         ax         ay         az         mx         my         mz
#0:       1.27    4359.10     187.74       2.04      -8.18    -421.33 
#1:    -164.57   -4378.57    -112.98     -69.21     286.53    -435.20 
#2:     -41.38     358.21    4361.73     -28.52      77.03    -249.96 
#3:    -127.78     421.94   -4342.93     -61.33      83.87    -514.74 
#4:    4251.81     187.99      62.83      95.57      75.67    -391.71 
#5:   -4458.25     338.40     -81.67    -187.27      85.35    -369.02 

This calibration file can be used by the new PSMoveCalibration API that wraps a PSMove object and provides calibration features on top of it. The function that users will probably use most is psmove_calibration_map() - it takes as input 3, 6 or 9 integer values and converts them into corresponding float values that have been normalized.

With the tumble test ("custom calibration"), we only get values for the accelerometer and magnetometer - for calibrating the gyro, we would need to have access to a turntable and control its speed - something that's not impossible to do, but very hard. Thanks to the research done by other MoveOnPC people, we can extract the information from the USB calibration blob - it stores the expected readings for 80 rotations/minute (according to the wiki page).

You can find the new code on github.com/thp/psmoveapi - expect some rough edges and more updates in the coming days and weeks :)