Question

I’ve been trying to use the SimpleCV (http://www.simplecv.org) module to run image recognition and manipulation. Unfortunately, my incoming video feed has been quite finicky, and I’m not sure what I did wrong. Just using some basic sample code:

import cvwindow = cv.NamedWindow("camera", 1)
capture = cv.CreateCameraCapture(0)
width = int(cv.GetCaptureProperty(capture, cv.CV_CAP_PROP_FRAME_WIDTH)) 
height = int(cv.GetCaptureProperty(capture, cv.CV_CAP_PROP_FRAME_HEIGHT))

while 1:
    img = cv.QueryFrame(capture)
    cv.ShowImage("camera", img)
    k = cv.WaitKey(1)
    if(k == 102):
        cv.destroyWindow("camera")
        break

Which works perfectly when I plug in my Logitech Webcam 500. However, when I attempt to use my Vimicro Altair camera, I get a grey screen, and when saving to file, the file is empty.

I also attempted to use SimpleCV code, based off their cookbook along the lines of:

mycam = Camera()
img = mycam.getImage()

which was equally unsuccessful, however instead of returning no data, simply returned an image that was completely black.

I’m at quite a loss of what is causing this, I tried the exact same system on my laptop, which failed to even get an image from the Logitech cam. I’m running Windows 7 64-bit with Python 2.7 and SimpleCV 1.1.

Thanks

Answer 1

I’m one of the SimpleCV developers. It appears you are trying to use the standard python openCV wrapper.

What I recommend doing is just run the example here:
https://github.com/sightmachine/SimpleCV/blob/develop/SimpleCV/examples/display/simplecam.py

Or here is the code as well:

import time, webbrowser
from SimpleCV import *

#create JPEG streamers
js = JpegStreamer(8080)
cam = Camera()

cam.getImage().save(js)
webbrowser.open("http://localhost:8080", 2)

while (1):
  i = cam.getImage()
  i.save(js)
  time.sleep(0.01) #yield to the webserver