Raise minimum images for calibration to 100

[spacey-sooty]

Description

We can see on
https://mrcal.secretsauce.net/docs-2.0/tour-choreography.html that more images appear to always be better, but diminishing returns kick in around 100 images. This shouldn't be too time consuming as a minimum and should get users the best effort to quality ratio so I think to makes sense as the default.

This PR also adds a bypass method for developers looking to test that will lower the limit to 10 images.

Meta

Merge checklist:

• Pull Request title is short, imperative summary of proposed changes
• The description documents the what and why, including events that led to this PR
• If this PR changes behavior or adds a feature, user documentation is updated
• If this PR touches photon-serde, all messages have been regenerated and hashes have not changed unexpectedly
• If this PR touches configuration, this is backwards compatible with all settings going back to the previous seasons's last release (seasons end after champs ends)
• If this PR touches pipeline settings or anything related to data exchange, the frontend typing is updated
• If this PR addresses a bug, a regression test for it is added
• If this PR adds a dependency, the license has been checked for compatibility and steps taken to follow it

The base branch was changed.

[mdurrani808]

This shouldn't be too time consuming

Is this true?

[samfreund]

This shouldn't be too time consuming

Is this true?

I've done like 200 in 10 minutes or so, assuming you have someone else to click the button that's about a picture every three seconds. For only 100, that's a picture every six seconds.

[spacey-sooty]

I quite comfortably did ~250 image calibrations in the pits at worlds in 2025 between matches so I don't see 100 being a huge barrier

[samfreund]

Some sort of bypass option may be useful

The merge-base changed after approval.

[samfreund]

[RKBoss6]

I'd say 50 is a nice compromise. For our team at least, calibrations take longer to make sure we get proper images, and having it raised to 100 will improve frustrations for quite a few teams (including ours) that calibrate slower and need to quickly calibrate. To me, being limited by the OS to collect 100 images rather than 12 doesn't seem like a good change for usability and quick setup.

That being said though, maybe we could have a limit of 50 and then a small banner in the calibration menu somewhere that says 100 images is strongly recommended...

[samfreund]

I'd say 50 is a nice compromise. For our team at least, calibrations take longer to make sure we get proper images, and having it raised to 100 will improve frustrations for quite a few teams (including ours) that calibrate slower and need to quickly calibrate. To me, being limited by the OS to collect 100 images rather than 12 doesn't seem like a good change for usability and quick setup.

That being said though, maybe we could have a limit of 50 and then a small banner in the calibration menu somewhere that says 100 images is strongly recommended...

Have you read the linked document? We're choosing 100 images because that's the empirically defined point of diminishing returns, but if you can provide evidence that you'll be able to get sufficient results with 50 images all the time, we might be willing to reconsider. Something to keep in mind here is that we want to help teams fall into success, and that means forcing them to get a good calibration. If we give them a recommendation, many teams won't follow it.

[samfreund]

We're also going to try exploring some new calibration methods/guides over the offseason, TBD what that looks like

[spacey-sooty]

Current issues with bypass:

• idk if this is an existing bug but if i reload the ui resets snapshots to 0 until i take another snapshot
• with bypass off i can click calibrate after 10 images
• bypass isn't sticky between reloads
• the minimum image in the snapshots counter on the left doesnt update

[samfreund]

I hath discovered that this is quite cursed.

Basically we send stuff to the backend for calib using this guy:

photonvision/photon-client/src/types/WebsocketDataTypes.ts

Lines 84 to 94 in 363b827

	export interface WebsocketCalibrationData {
	patternWidth: number;
	boardType: number;
	hasEnough: boolean;
	count: number;
	minCount: number;
	videoModeIndex: number;
	patternHeight: number;
	squareSizeIn: number;
	markerSizeIn: number;
	}

. That's kinda bad, cause when we want an update, it's gotta get pushed back through, and we can't really request it or anything. It also doesn't persist if we reload the page, which is hella cooked. Anyways, I propose we just merge everything that changes during the calib process into the pipeline settings.

[dkogan]

Hi. I'm the mrcal; just stumbled on this. The numbers on the choreography page are scenario-specific, and you'll get something different with different cameras (fov, resolution) and different geometry and a different chessboard. Sometimes 50 images is more than enough, and sometimes not. mrcal gives you uncertainty maps, so you can get 50 (or whatever) images, look at the uncertainty, and use that to decide if you need more images or not. I don't know if your tooling makes that difficult, but that would be my recommendation.

[mcm001]

Wraps weirdly for me at 1920x1080.

[spacey-sooty]

has this been fixed?

[spacey-sooty]

@samfreund

[spacey-sooty]

is this a legit todo? in that case cut an issue with more details