Vision library for Tinkerforge RedBrick developed at FH-Bielefeld/Campus Minden. http://www.tinkerforge.com/de/doc/Hardware/Bricks/RED_Brick.html

Tinkervision consists of

• a core component that manages camera input, conversion of frames between several supported formats, execution of external computer vision algorithms, and gives access to their results.
• Some basic example cv-algorithms provided as modules that are loadable by the core component.

The library is intended to be loaded as part of the Tinkerforge red-brick-apid, though it can be used independently as well. However, the functionality and interface was designed for the former usage.

The library is being developed and tested on Ubuntu 15.10, which comes with g++-4.9.2. Earlier versions of g++ may fail, though 4.8 might be fine. It is also tested to build and run on the target platform, the Tinkerforge Red Brick, which operates a version of Linux Sunxi, also with g++-4.9.2

The repository comes with a script to install required libraries and several Makefiles to build the core component, the modules and tests.

1. Executing python install_required.py should install the missing libraries of the core component.
2. make or DEBUG=1 make builds the library.
3. make install installs necessary headers and the lib under /usr/include and /usr/lib.

There is a top-level makefile in src/modules which builds all modules, with the exception of the streamer module. This requires additional external libraries, which can be installed with a script found in this repository. Each module can also be build and installed individually with the corresponding makefile. To build and install all:

1. cd src/modules
2. make && sudo make install
3. cd streamer
4. sudo python install_required.py
5. make && sudo make install

The library provides a C-interface, which can be used directly, as demonstrated in the test files in src/test/. However, it is intended to be run as part of the Tinkerforge red-brick-apid on the Tinkerforge Red-Brick. Currently, the supported image is 1.7.

To use the library, an extended version of the red-brick-apid is needed. On the Red Brick:

1. mkdir /home/tf/Software && cd /home/tf/Software
2. git clone https://github.com/philkroos/tinkervision
3. git clone https://github.com/philkroos/red-brick-apid

Build and install Tinkervision and the provided modules, as described above. To build the custom version of red-brick-apid:

1. cd /home/tf/Software/red-brick-apid
2. git checkout tinkervision && cd src
3. WITH_VISION=yes python build_pkg.py
4. sudo dpkg -i redapid-2.0.2+vision_armhf.deb

The next step is to test the library bindings. This repository comes with some scripts which call into the generated Python-API. In general, all languages supported by Tinkerforge should work, but only the Python bindings have been tested yet for Tinkervision. In any case, it should work both directly on the Red-Brick and on a PC which can access the device:

1. mkdir /home/tf/TinkervisionTest
2. cd /home/tf/TinkervisionTest
3. git clone https://github.com/philkroos/tinkervision
4. git clone https://github.com/philkroos/generators
5. cd generators && git checkout tinkervision
6. mkdir /home/tf/Tinkervision/Test/tinkervision/src/test/red-brick/scripts/tinkerforge
7. cd python && WITH_TINKERVISION=1 python generate_python_bindings.py
8. cp ip_connection bindings/brick_red.py /home/tf/TinkervisionTest/tinkervision/src/test/red-brick/scripts/tinkerforge
9. cd /home/tf/TinkervisionTest/tinkervision/src/test/red-brick/scripts
10. touch tinkerforge/__init__.py

Then you should be able to execute the scripts, but you need the UID of your Red-Brick, which can be found e.g. with the Tinkerforge brickv. main.py and rb_setup.py are utilities. The other files are tests which can be executed like:

• ./main.py <uid> colormotion

If execution fails there may be another instance of ip_connection or brick_red.py in the system, probably from an installation of brickv. The easiest solution would be to remove all system-wide installed tinkerforge packages then, as well as the egg from Pythons site-packages.

The library searches for loadable modules in two paths:

1. /usr/lib/tinkervision is fixed
2. The subdirectory lib in a custom path, which is configured at compile time:
   • USER_PREFIX=/home/me/vision/ make The default prefix is /home/<current-user>/tv/. The makefile tries to create a valid directory structure.

The provided modules will be installed to the system folder by default, but if PRE is set during make install, they'll be installed to the user folder: PRE=~/tv/lib make install installs the module to the pre-configured library path.