Abeocracy

The coming Tuesday (29.09.09) there will be meeting of all the GSOC'ders in the Benelux. This meeting will be at the HSB in Brussels during TechTue25 (more info at HSB). There will be a lot of other people from outside of GSOC so you are always welcome if you would like to connect with technical minded people and share ideas.

PS Bring you GSOC-tshirt if it arives on time!

The color masks of the camera are working correctly now...

With the midterm evaluation behind us I thought it would be useful to post a update on the progress on the camera module for Mac OSX. The current version on github can read a frame from the camera and copy it to the surface. There is still something wrong with the colors, this has probably something to do with the masks in surf->format. I have tried out some combination but non seem to work, so if you have suggestion on how to get the colors write please post them on the pygame mailinglist.

I have thoroughly cleaned up the camera_mac.m file and have removed all Cocoa code because it caused to many problems. Only the mac_gworld_to_nsimage used Cocoa so I didn't have to trow away too much code. The following functions are now available:

• mac_list_cameras()
• mac_open_device ()
• mac_init_device()
• mac_close_device()
• mac_start_capturing()
• mac_stop_capturing ()
• mac_read_raw()
  note: When I try to print the string I get nothing, this is probably because of a 0 byte in the array.
• mac_read_frame()
• mac_camera_idle()
• mac_copy_gworld_to_surface()

The PyCameraObject struct has altered a bit because I don't use a ImageSequence anymore because it was easier to get the frame copy the frame directly instead of recording a frame into a sequence and then decompressing a frame out of it. In addition to removing the ImageSequence I make use of the 'buffer struct'. Here is the current PyCameraObject struct:

typedef struct {
    PyObject_HEAD
    char* device_name;              // unique name of the device
    SeqGrabComponent component;     // A type used by the Sequence Grabber API
    SGChannel channel;              // Channel of the Sequence Grabber
    GWorldPtr gworld;               // Pointer to the struct that holds the
                                    // data of the captured image
    Rect boundsRect;                // bounds of the image frame
    long size;                      // size of the image in our buffer to draw
    short bytes;                    // number of bytes in gworld
    struct buffer pixels;           // pixels
} PyCameraObject;

A usual you can find the latest version on github.com/ab3 so if you would like to test the latest changes or would like to help with the color problem or the read_raw function, you are always welcome.

ToDo

Here is a list of thing I still have to do:

• fix the colors of read_frame()
• fix read_raw()
• implement set_controller() and get_controller()
• add simple computer vision stuff
  • thresholding with hysteresis *...
• optimization, sbggr8_to_rgb???
• implement proof of concept game...

Conclusion

So this concludes my midterm report, feel free to post any bugs, comments and suggestions

The past two weeks I was busy studying for my examinations, so I didn't have much time to work on my GSOC project. However I was able to do a lot of work to get the PyCameraObject struct integrated in the existing code and implemented some additional functions.

Here is the definition of this struct, it isn't completed yet because some "types" I would like to put into it cause compile errors.

PyCameraObject:

typedef struct {
    PyObject_HEAD
    char* device_name;              // unieke name of the device
    SeqGrabComponent component;     // A type used by the Sequence Grabber API
    SGChannel channel;              // Channel of the Sequence Grabber
    GWorldPtr gWorld;               // Pointer to the struct that holds the data of the captured image
    Rect boundsRect;                // bounds of the image frame
} PyCameraObject;

In addition of implementing the PyCameraObject struct, I have writen the folowing functions.

• mac_device_init():
  This function initializes the sequence grabber component and prepares it for capturing images.
• mac_device_close():
  I have extended this function so it works with the PyCameraObject struct.
• mac_start_capturing():
  At this moment this function
• camera_start():
  This function just calls the above functions.
• camera_get_size():
  Simple function that returns the size of the image frame.

Schedule for this week

This week I am planning to finish the mac_start_capturing function so that I can capture images from my camera an put then in a SDL_Surface object. As usional you can folow my work on my github account.

Hello,

Welcome to my weekly address to the PyGame Nation. This is the first of many entries about my work on the camera module for Mac OSX.

This week I have written the following 'simple' functions:

• mac_list_camera:
  On the module for Linux, a list of available cameras in made by trying out every potential device. On the OSX module I use the FindNextComponent function to search for Components of the SeqGrabComponentType type.
• mac_device_open:
  A simple function that open a camera, it uses OpenComponent.
• mac_device_close:
  A simple function that closes a camera, it uses CloseComponent.

The remaining time I have spend on build problems and bugs :(

Schedule for next week

The coming week I will spend my time on defining and implementing a camera class specific to Mac OSX, because the existing class is to much intertwined with v4l. When I have done that I will be able to integrate the above functions into the python module.

As usual you can follow my progress on my github account

PS I still have to add a comment system to this blog, so if you would like to comment on something I suggest you do this on the pygame mailing list.