Hi @JoelHanerth and @m.bersiner,
as @m.bersiner correctly mentioned, we are allowing the usage of the Pixy hardware, but not their software. Same goes for other similar products, e.g. Huskylens.
In our latest rules draft for 2024, we tried to make the entire challenge of Rescue Line solvable without a need of a camera, to make the challenge more beginner-friendly. However, we still expect (and would like) for more experienced teams to use cameras. Yet, cameras are supposed to be a high-effort = high-reward concept. With the use of premade software contained in products such as Pixy and Huskylens, this concept does not work, and would make these cameras both easier to use AND more effective then e.g. simple photosensors in task of line following.
It does unfortunately mean there is no option to process camera data in block-based programming language (as far as I know), but as I already stated, cameras are sensors that are expected to be used by more experienced students, who already program in text-based programming languages. On the other hand, we do not expect you to do implement all the image processing algorithms on your own. We allow most image processing libraries. A library I would recommend looking into (its available for both C++ and Python) is opencv, which contains a lot of useful functions that can turn the array of raw data into something that is easier to work with, but requires some testing and tuning of parameters, rather than just pressing a button. Here is a short example on how to detect blobs, for example.
Hope you find this answer helpful and best of luck!
Matej