Make computers see with SimpleCV, the Open Source Framework for Vision
SimpleCV is an interface for Open Source Machine Vision, using OpenCV and the Python programming language.
It provides a concise, readable interface for cameras, image manipulation, feature extraction, and format conversion. Our mission is to give casual users a comprehensive interface for basic machine vision functions and an elegant programming interface for advanced users.
We like SimpleCV because:
- Even beginning programmers can write simple machine vision tests
- Cameras, video files, images, and video streams are all interoperable
- Information on image features can be extracted, sorted and filtered easily
- Manipulations are fast, with easy to remember names
- Linear algebra is strictly optional
Here is the simplecv "hello world":
import SimpleCV
SimpleCV.Camera().getImage().save("picture.jpg")
For more code snippets, we recommend the cookbook or looking at our example scripts in SimpleCV/examples
If you haven't worked with OpenCV or Scipy before, your best bet is to get one of our all-in-one Superpacks from SourceForge: http://sf.net/projects/simplecv/files/
You will absolutely need:
- OpenCV installed for your platform http://opencv.willowgarage.com/wiki/InstallGuide
- SciPY/Numpy installed for your platform http://www.scipy.org/Download
- Python Imaging Library http://www.pythonware.com/products/pil/
- PyGame for drawing and interfaces http://pygame.org
Once you have all the required libraries installed::
easy_install simplecv
If you need more help, look at the installation docs: http://simplecv.org/doc/installation.html
Easiest Method
The easiest method to install SimpleCV is with the 1-click installers located at http://www.simplecv.org. These installers should install all the necessary libraries you need to get SimpleCV up and running easily.
Easy Method
If you need more specific instructions per platform there is: http://www.simplecv.org/doc/installation.html
Device Support:
- OpenKinect/freenect http://openkinect.org/wiki/Main_Page
Barcode reading:
- Zxing http://code.google.com/p/zxing/
- python-zxing https://github.com/oostendo/python-zxing
OCR:
- Tesseract http://code.google.com/p/tesseract-ocr/
- python-tesseract http://code.google.com/p/python-tesseract/
Machine Learning:
- Orange http://orange.biolab.si/ (with python bindings)
Video tutorials and demos can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/user/IngenuitasOfficial
or check out: http://www.simplecv.org
Once you have SimpleCV installed, you can use it in a specialized iPython shell. This pre-loads all the symbols and gives you some extra functions and macros for using SimpleCV.
To run the SimpleCV shell, from the installation directory type:
python simplecv.py