plugIn for FireWire Camera

[Frequency]

does anybody know how to run a firewire cam in imagej?

i have a cam of the sony xcd family with IEEE 1394.

does anybody know how to get start with???
please help
greetz

[David Hitrys]

QImaging (warning: I work for QImaging), makes a line of FireWire cameras that come with an ImageJ plugin.  The plugin allows fo racquisition of images directly into ImageJ.


-----Original Message-----
From: "Frequency" <[hidden email]>
To: [hidden email]
Sent: 11/23/06 4:24 AM
Subject: plugIn for FireWire Camera

does anybody know how to run a firewire cam in imagej?

i have a cam of the sony xcd family with IEEE 1394.

does anybody know how to get start with???
please help
greetz

--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/plugIn-for-FireWire-Camera-tf2689845.html#a7500855
Sent from the ImageJ mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

[Gabriel Landini]

On Thursday 23 November 2006 14:27, David Hitrys wrote:
> QImaging (warning: I work for QImaging), makes a line of FireWire cameras
> that come with an ImageJ plugin.  The plugin allows fo racquisition of
> images directly into ImageJ.

David,

Now that you mention this (I bought on of those cameras), do you have any say
in the way that the plugin is being developed?

I have 3 suggestions:

1. One of the problems is that the plugin would benefit enormously from being
able to be controlled from either the macro language or a plugin (currently
one cannot do this). For instance I would like very much to be able to
trigger a shot from the macro language, and to be able to set the other
controls too. At the moment I wrote and I am using the IJ_Robot plugin to do
it, but it is a pain regarding the positioning of the windows. This also
prevents to develop more complex plugins that include image capturing.

2. Another problem is that the plugin does not allow to do average capture
(while the Windows program can). Not sure why, the option for doing average
capture is grey (and not functional) when using the plugin.

3. Please, please provide a linux version of the plugin. QImaging provides a
linux SDK, but this does not seem to work in suse 10.1.

Please feel free to contact me off-line if you want more specific details.

Regards,

Gabriel

[David Hitrys]

Thank you for the suggestions!  

1.  Being able to control the camera from ImageJ would, indeed, be useful.
However, due to the nature of the existing plug-in, this is currently not
possible.  We will look into other avenues of supporting scripting in
ImageJ, though we currently do not have concrete plans at this point.

2.  The Snap button is currently the only mapped function to ImageJ.
Since the average feature is part of QCapture Suite and not the plugin and
since ImageJ has its own average function, this feature would be redundant.

3.  We do not have a Linux plugin currently because we do not have QCapture
for Linux.  Since our plugins invoke a subset of the QCapture program, this
would not be possible in Linux.


-----Original Message-----
From: ImageJ Interest Group [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of
Gabriel Landini
Sent: Thursday, November 23, 2006 10:32 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: plugIn for FireWire Camera

On Thursday 23 November 2006 14:27, David Hitrys wrote:
> QImaging (warning: I work for QImaging), makes a line of FireWire
> cameras that come with an ImageJ plugin.  The plugin allows fo
> racquisition of images directly into ImageJ.

David,

Now that you mention this (I bought on of those cameras), do you have any
say in the way that the plugin is being developed?

I have 3 suggestions:

1. One of the problems is that the plugin would benefit enormously from
being able to be controlled from either the macro language or a plugin
(currently one cannot do this). For instance I would like very much to be
able to trigger a shot from the macro language, and to be able to set the
other controls too. At the moment I wrote and I am using the IJ_Robot plugin
to do it, but it is a pain regarding the positioning of the windows. This
also prevents to develop more complex plugins that include image capturing.

2. Another problem is that the plugin does not allow to do average capture
(while the Windows program can). Not sure why, the option for doing average
capture is grey (and not functional) when using the plugin.

3. Please, please provide a linux version of the plugin. QImaging provides a
linux SDK, but this does not seem to work in suse 10.1.

Please feel free to contact me off-line if you want more specific details.

Regards,

Gabriel

[Vincenzo Della Mea]

I'm glad with a Scion Firewire camera. Did you try with the FWCamAkiz  
plugin?
(http://www.pmmh.espci.fr/~daerr/progs.html#FWCamAkiz)

Il giorno 23/nov/06, alle ore 10:24, Frequency ha scritto:

> does anybody know how to run a firewire cam in imagej?
>
> i have a cam of the sony xcd family with IEEE 1394.
>
> does anybody know how to get start with???
> please help
> greetz
>
> --
> View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/plugIn-for- 
> FireWire-Camera-tf2689845.html#a7500855
> Sent from the ImageJ mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

* Vincenzo Della Mea
* Medical Informatics, Telemedicine and Ehealth Lab
* University of Udine, Italy
* http://mitel.dimi.uniud.it/  -  http://www.eslide.net

[Gabriel Landini]

Hi David,
Thanks for your comments.

On Friday 24 November 2006 03:01, David Hitrys wrote:
> 1.  Being able to control the camera from ImageJ would, indeed, be useful.
> However, due to the nature of the existing plug-in, this is currently not
> possible.  We will look into other avenues of supporting scripting in
> ImageJ, though we currently do not have concrete plans at this point.

> 2.  The Snap button is currently the only mapped function to ImageJ.

That is right, it would be ideal to have another similar plugin that does only
this:

When called, snap a shot that is then sent to IJ.

That is all. I am sure that your engineers would have little trouble doing
this, since it would be a direct call to the snap function, bypassing all the
dialog & button pressing (i.e. not waiting for the button to be pressed).

> Since the average feature is part of QCapture Suite and not the plugin and
> since ImageJ has its own average function, this feature would be redundant.

Not quite. The averaging function in IJ requires a stack of images already
grabbed first. So, really there is no straightforward way to do this from IJ
with the current plugin. Sure one can use the IJ_Robot to capture several
shots, but it is not elegant at all (one has to add timers to wait for the
image to be transferred to IJ, wait for the number of grabbed images, make
sure that the plugin windows is in the right position for the robot to click,
etc).

The QCapture Suite, however has its own handling of this which is a lot
quicker. There would be a huge advantage of having the average grabbing
function available from IJ.
Again, one plugin that just returns n averaged frames would be excellent.

Anyway, isn't the IJ plugin just a wrapper for some of the QCapture functions?
The plugin calls a dll, could the average capture be called this same way?

> 3.  We do not have a Linux plugin currently because we do not have QCapture
> for Linux.  Since our plugins invoke a subset of the QCapture program, this
> would not be possible in Linux.

However, it is possible for QImaging to provide a generic linux executable
that when called just grabs one shot (no buttons, no menu), so from a plugin
one can call the executable via a system call. I am sure that this can be
done, but unfortunately the SDK has some problems in suse linux, so I cannot
try it.

The current QCapture plugin is nice, but it is only suitable for manual
grabbing. This, unfortunately, limits its usefulness.
One cannot do things like autofocusing, stage controlled acquisition, time
lapsed imaging, automatic ratio background correction, etc.
What I am suggesting is much simpler and much more powerful and would allow
all of that.
(I can't believe that Q does not see this as a strong selling point, specially
when there are IJ developers willing to produce such plugins!).

Thanks for listening.
Regards,

Gabriel

[Frequency]

Thanks,
but the link doesn´t work.

could I use this plugin also for a Sony firewire cam?

greetz

Vincenzo Della Mea wrote

I'm glad with a Scion Firewire camera. Did you try with the FWCamAkiz  
plugin?
(http://www.pmmh.espci.fr/~daerr/progs.html#FWCamAkiz)

Il giorno 23/nov/06, alle ore 10:24, Frequency ha scritto:

> does anybody know how to run a firewire cam in imagej?
>
> i have a cam of the sony xcd family with IEEE 1394.
>
> does anybody know how to get start with???
> please help
> greetz
>
> --
> View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/plugIn-for- 
> FireWire-Camera-tf2689845.html#a7500855
> Sent from the ImageJ mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

* Vincenzo Della Mea
* Medical Informatics, Telemedicine and Ehealth Lab
* University of Udine, Italy
* http://mitel.dimi.uniud.it/  -  http://www.eslide.net

... [show rest of quote]

... [show rest of quote]

[Nick Mortimer]

Hi All,
 
I'm having a problem, I'm using the FractEDM macro. I seem to be having problems measuring the area of thresholded pixcels. Somtimes it works and sometimes it returns just the total area of the picture. I think its a selection problem of somting. Any ideas?
 
Nick

[Heeschen, Bill (WA)]

Greetings, all.

I must chime in with a second to Gabriel's eloquent requests for QImaging (and other vendors') support of macro-controlled image capture.  I have separately made these identical requests to QImaging - although not as well-stated!  (Thanks, Gabriel)  I know this topic has been on the list before, but it is still not resolved, so worth continuing the thread...

Related note to all camera suppliers - it seems that if we had a FULL implementation of the TWAIN protocol for your cameras - like we do for many scanners - it should serve much of the same purpose regarding the ability to run the camera from a macro/plugin without user intervention or the IJ_Robot.  This would include adjustment of exposure, resolution, etc. as well as capture-on-demand image collection.  We could then use one of the Java/TWAIN packages to finish off the task. (JTWAIN:  http://asprise.com/product/jtwain/, Morena:  http://www.gnome.sk/ )

(My experience is with QImaging and Leica TWAIN interfaces - both work well interactively, but neither allow full automated control in the versions I used.  I've not tried other cameras with TWAIN, so have no comment beyond these two.)

Best Regards,

Bill

William A. Heeschen, Ph.D.
Microscopy, Digital Imaging
The Dow Chemical Company
Midland, MI  48674
[hidden email]

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 24 Nov 2006 08:51:52 +0000
From:    Gabriel Landini <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: plugIn for FireWire Camera

Hi David,
Thanks for your comments.

On Friday 24 November 2006 03:01, David Hitrys wrote:
> 1.  Being able to control the camera from ImageJ would, indeed, be
> useful. However, due to the nature of the existing plug-in, this is
> currently not possible.  We will look into other avenues of supporting
> scripting in ImageJ, though we currently do not have concrete plans at
> this point.

> 2.  The Snap button is currently the only mapped function to ImageJ.

That is right, it would be ideal to have another similar plugin that does only
this:
<remaining text deleted>