CCV – Things to do !

Initially I thought, roadmap will be a better word , but naah! This is just a post on what “may be” in CCV in future releases ! Also people who want to contribute into CCV code base and have no idea what they can do , these are some features that can be worked on ! Some of them are pretty easy, so can be nice place to start !

• Multicam (up to 16 PS3 cameras supported by CLEye Driver)
• WM_TOUCH messages along with TUIO messages
• TUIO on multiple ports(done in CCV 1.4 final)
• Debug mode improvements (say -p arguments prints number of blobs and so on. Right now only -d option is supported for logging )
• Run directly as service. Once all parameters are set and saved , you don’t need any GUI !
• Porting to Linux – Now it’s about time to port CCV to Linux and do cross platform development !
• Object Tracking improvements by use of ROI.
• GUI improvements – as suggested by Patrick.
• Tracking performance improvements and ability to adjust the ccv settings in single steps(suggested by the_goat)
• Improve fiducial tracking (may be using direct reactivision library instead of addon ?) (suggested by Rogier Mars)
• un-Distortion filters in CCV (https://amitsarangi.wordpress.com/2010/09/02/ccv-1-4/#comment-874)

This is not all , this is just a list of what comes to my mind right now ! If you want to add/modify any feature, just let me know , and I will add it up !

I have tried some of these and got success in some (like- running as service,debug mode improvements, multiple port TUIO) but the code is not mature enough to be merged into the repo. So if any of you want to work on these features, you can ask me/anyone in dev team for help !

You think you are not the “code-guy” and still want to contribute ? You are always welcome to help in documentation ! CCV is nicely documented, also the code is written so that it is easy to follow ! But better is always good 😉 !

Community Core Vision v 1.4

Finally the summer is over. Google Summer of Code made this summer one of the most amazing summers I have had. There are many people I need to thank for the successful completion of my project including Pawel Solyga(Mentor), Christian Moore, Jimmy Hertz, Sharath Patali and many other users who took time to test and give feedback for the test version of CCV-COT.

Its a great pleasure for me to announce that my work will be integrated into CCV mainstream development and will be released with this release (1.4).

Note : There has been some major changes in this release, so please read this fully before trying CCV-1.4a. Also if you have not tried out CCV-COT , you may want to read this post prior to reading this.

Changelog (After CCV-COT):

• Complete Fiducial Support (Integration of ofxFiducialFinder addon by Alain Ramos).
• TUIO XML messages bug solved.
• CCV Debug mode
• Different Filter chain and controls for Fiducial and Object/Fingers.
• Fiducial settings on config.xml file.
• Object acceleration calculations included.
• removal and inclusion of some keyboard controls.
• Closing of application from the “X” button,minimizing the application.
• Changes in GUI
• Blob counter for Finger, Fiducials and Objects respectively.
• Sample AS3 app to test Custom Object Tracker(COT) added.

Community Core Vision v 1.4a

• For Fingers + Objects – You can follow the post regarding CCV-COT and get started. The blob counter in the information window shows the count of finger blobs, object blobs and fiducial blobs respectively.

• For Fingers + Fiducial –

1. Start the application. Configure(Adjust the filter and calibrate) it for Finger. Enable Fiducials mode in the “Track” Panel.
2. Press “i”. This will take you to the Fiducial Control Mode. “i” is the filter toggle key. In the debug window you will see The “Filter” tag changing to “Fiducial” from “Finger/Object” (See the screenshot below).
3. Now you can adjust the filters so that you can see clear fiducials on the Binary Image. Note : If Fiducial mode is not enabled in the “Track” panel , you will see either a blank image or a still image.
4. For better understanding , think of it like this. The camera image is copied into two images, one of them is analyzed for Finger/Objects and other for fiducials. Initially (when Filter is “Finger/Object”), all the sliders and controls are used to control the image that is analyzed for “Finger/Object”. When you press “i”, now all the sliders and controls are used to control the image that is analyzed for fiducials.
5. The blob counter in the information window shows the count of finger blobs, object blobs and fiducial blobs respectively.

• For Fingers+Objects+Fiducials- (**Not recommended for all**) This was something which was disabled initially because Fiducial tracking solves the problem of Object tracking. But again , we decided to give the user the freedom to choose what they have to track.  In this mode, most likely Objects and Fiducial will be confused (e.g. the image below)

But of course you need to be very lucky to get this mode working. A lot of adjustment will be required. But it is worth trying ;).

Tests :

Thanks to jimmy hertz, he has tested this version of CCV with his DI setup. Here are some images from his test.

In case of any doubts/suggestions get back to me by mail/comment/twitter/Facebook or by whatever mean you can. :-). It is now released on NUIGroup. Grab your own copy here :

DOWNLOAD : CCV-1.4.0-win-bin-preview.zip

DOWNLOAD : CCV-1.4.0-win-bin-final.zip

DOWNLOAD : CCV-1.4.0-lin-32-bin.tar.gz

DOWNLOAD CCV 1.4.0 For your own Platform

Or

Compile it yourself from LATEST SOURCE CODE

CCV-COT : Update

In the past weeks, I have been working on my Last Post’s TO DO List, and this post is to update you with my work.

CCV Debug Mode :

As the CCV users may be knowing , CCV logging was removed in CCV 1.3. This was due to several users reporting a bug  that the logs become very big size(sometimes in GBs). Logs help developers to visualize a crash situation, so its quite an important part. Therefore I have tried a workaround for that. Instead of logging every time, we make the logging optional. This is called CCV Debugging mode. You just have to pass a command line argument -d for that e.g.

"Community Core Vision.exe" -d

And CCV Debugging mode is activated. Also , to make it simpler , in the next release a shortcut to CCV Debug mode will be included with the binaries. As usual this saves the Logs into the “logs” folder with the timestamp as the filename.

CCV Fiducial:

I know, this has been much awaited and many people have tried to do this before. Here is Stefan Schlupek’s repo where he managed to do it properly. I have integrated Fiducial support in CCV-COT.

Things TBD :

• First of all , I have to test the Fiducial additions ASAP and do all the corrections.
• Sending 2DObj messages for Objects (right now it is 2DCur) also for Fiducials.
• The TUIO bug , that has been many reports of TUIO not working properly. Have to look into that.
• Better Object Tracking algorithm (after all the integrations are done)

Release :

I am not releasing this time, as I have not tested them well. So in next few days, there will be changes going on. I will release them after testing it out. It must be soon though ! In case you are in a hurry to try it out , you can do it yourself by checking out the repository and compiling the code yourself. In case you run into any problems, just let me know via comments/mail.

Also for my previous version , slugmobile(noah) has compiled binaries for Mac OSX . In case you want to try them out, check here.

GSoC 2010 : CCV Template Matching

Hello everyone , its a little long since my last post but yes, I had been busy coding and thought of posting after I got some results. Now that I am getting some results, I thought of posting an article about my work and plans.

Also I want to tell you that there was a slight deviation of my plan/road-map from my last post. In that post I mentioned regarding the two parts, one for template selection and one for template matching. Well, I have changed the plan a little bit. Instead of having 2 tools, one for selection and one for tracking, I integrated selection and tracking into one.So it will be just modification of CCV, which will do both template selection and tracking. Initially I thought it will be a bit slow, but it turned out to be effective. You can follow my work on http://code.google.com/p/ccv-tt.

Here is a small preview of what I did.

As you can see, in the GUI I have added  a “Track” section where you specify what to track (fingers/objects/fiducial). Also I added a “Template Area” panel , which decided the blue and green rectangle you see in the figure. Also I modified the settings section to have Save templates and Load templates.

Also I have included the TemplateUtils class in the sourcecode which takes care of all the template works. The templates are saved in “templates.xml” file in “data” folder.The ID will be auto assigned. In case you want to change it , you can change in the xml file and load the xml again while the CCV is running.

Right now , I am able to track objects(I am able to differentiate them from finger blob). Next what I will be doing is :

• Template ID assignment
• x,y points conversion of the templates.
• Drawing of the tracked objects
• TUIO message sending
• Better Template matching method (Right now it is very simple)
• CCV shortcut keys for templates
• Fiducial integration

In next week, I will be implementing some of these functions and testing. Once it is ready for the release, I will have a release package for alpha testers and have a video showing the work. Also then I will be posting a step by step documentation soon how to work with this. Look for the posts here in near future.