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Computer Vision Applications and Linux?

Posted by Cliff on from the I-spy-with-my-digital-eye dept.

blackcoot asks: "I'm about to start work on a summer project with my advisor, part of which involves getting a lab set up for real time (or as close as we can get) computer vision applications. Currently, the only machines in the lab with digital video cameras attached to them are Win2k boxen, and that's only because we haven't been able to find reasonable drivers for the firewire cameras that we have. My advisor and I would much rather *not* write our own driver for these cameras; right now my advisor has the budget for a couple reasonably inexpensive cameras. This leads me to a couple questions: are there firewire (or equivalently high bandwidth bus) based digital video cameras (not framegrabbbers) out there that have reasonably solid Linux or Video4Linux drivers; have any Slashdot readers tried to build a vision type application under Linux (something that does more processing than Xaw TV); Am I setting myself up for a whole world of pain trying to make this happen under Linux, or is it doable? Any words of wisdom? Your help is much appreciated."

2 of 16 comments (clear)

  1. Ask me in about three months by flikx · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm with the SAE Walking Machine Challenge team at the University of Utah, and part of the goals for this upcoming year is to incorporate a vision system with rudimentary object recognition into the existing walking machine platform as part of bringing the machine to full autonomy.

    I've utilized RT-Linux on an onboard 'normal' PC as the control platform, and have no intentions of changing it. Unfortunately, I cannot be of much real help at the moment, since I'm at the same stage as the article submitter. But if anyone is interested in details about the system, I may be of help in the future.

    --
    One future, two choices. Oppose them or let them destroy us.
  2. Did you look in the kernel sources? by zenyu · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I've written a vision program in linux and later one in Windows, I can't see ever doing the windows thing again. By the end of the project I had spent much more time on Windows annoyances than it would have taken to write a linux driver.

    Why not use a solid framegrabber like the Osprey? Do you have some super high res progressive scan cameras or something? Most vision research is done on prerecorded video so I'm assuming your doing some real-time tracking. If this is a short 2-4 month project and you need the firewire cameras sticking with the working Windows setup might be the answer. If it's longer there is at least one good book on writing linux drivers (there are pointers in the kernel Docs.)