Question

I’m attempting to use OpenCV (on Android) in a project, however I’m struggling to find good resources. I’ve found example demos from the OpenCV site, and several tutorials, but many of them aren’t very clear.

Are there any step-by-step, clear tutorials available, ideally with accompanying code?

(Particularly anything helpful with object recognition – so things such as colour detection, so likely colour histograms, and any means of feature recognition – possibly Haar Training. Though anything on OpenCV would be great!)

The (many) tutorials / demos I have found include the following –

OpenCV Guide
http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~cs4411/wiki/index.php?title=OpenCV_Guide
(One of the better ones, found through Stack Overflow)

OpenCV on Android
http://opencv.itseez.com/doc/tutorials/introduction/android_binary_package/android_binary_package.html
(This was very helpful in installing OpenCV to work with Eclipse and Android, though I found it lacking in any kind of documentation for the demo samples)

Haar Training
http://note.sonots.com/SciSoftware/haartraining.html
(I found this a bit vague and confusing)

OpenCV Tutorials
http://www.shervinemami.info/openCV.html
(This was one of the better tutorials)

Answer 1

I’ve had pretty much the same experience as you have. My strategy for getting good results with opencv has been a two-pronged approach:

1. Find a tutorial on whatever it is I’m trying to get done and scan for all references to opencv functions, and data structures.
2. Look up the documentation for all those items referenced in point 1: http://opencv.willowgarage.com/documentation/
3. Then re-read the tutorial, going to the corresponding documentation whenever there’s something I don’t understand.

I found that my understanding of the various tutorials went up drastically once I used the documentation and took it a step at a time. Not an exact answer, but hope it helps 🙂