code available at https://github.com/pageauc/motion-track

Here is my YouTube video showing the demo code running on a Raspberry Pi B2 http://youtu.be/09JS7twPBsQ RPI forum post here https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=790082#p790082

See https://github.com/pageauc/motion-track/blob/master/speed-track/speed_track.md for my new speed track - an object speed tracking program demo using similar opencv code as motion-track.py Speed track YouTube video here https://youtu.be/eRi50BbJUro

motion-track.py is a raspberry pi python opencv2 (computer vision) motion tracking demonstration program.

It will detect motion in the field of view and use opencv2 to compare images and calculate a threshold image and related contours. It will determine the largest contour and return it's x,y coordinates. I will implement similar code in a RPI robotics project, but thought the code would be useful for other users as a starting point or as part of an existing project.

I did quite a bit of searching on the internet, github, etc, but could not find a similar python picamera implementation that returns x,y coordinates of the most dominate moving object in the frame although some came close.

Some of this code is based on a YouTube tutorial by Kyle Hounslow using C here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6rPdRZzgjg

####Prerequisites Requires a Raspberry Pi computer running an up-to-date raspbian distro and a RPI camera module installed and configured. The dependencies below may be required depending on your previous installs.

cd ~
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install python-opencv python-picamera
mkdir motion-track
cd motion-track    
wget https://raw.github.com/pageauc/motion-track/master/motion-track.py

start up a desktop GUI session and run the code from IDLE or open a terminal console and run

python ./motion-track.py

if you get an opengl error then see this article about installing opengl on a RPI P2 https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/another-new-raspbian-release/

Otherwise install opengl support library per following command then reboot.

sudo apt-get install libgl1-mesa-dri

I have set window_on = True so the opencv status windows can display camera motion images and a circle marking x,y coordinates as well as the threshold images. The circle diameter can be change using CIRCLE_SIZE variable.
You can set window_on = False if you need to run from SSH session. If debug = True then status information will be displayed without a GUI desktop session.

I have added motion3-track.py for use with python3 and OpenCV3 FYI. Only the cv2.findContour line needed to be changed due to OpenCV3 syntax difference. Steps for installing OpenCV3 can be found here https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=792568&sid=adf009c84bee379cd08b377168535477#p792568

Good Luck Claude ...