[sugar] [Activities] Panorama activity

[Nirav Patel]

I don't know about integrating it into Record, but the other issues
are fairly easy to resolve.  I wrote a Python module over the summer
to interface v4l2 cameras that returns Pygame surfaces.  Capturing
images is near instant (~20ms for 640x480 RGB).  Autogain and
autowhitebalance can be disabled using v4l2 camera controls.  There is
support in my module for the hflip and vflip controls, but adding
additional controls is trivial.

Alternately, we could just use a little utility in C to access any
v4l2 camera control.  Since the module I wrote is for Pygame and is
eventually going to be cross platform, adding v4l2 specific stuff to
it is probably not the greatest idea.

It may just be better to skip sticking it in Record and make a
standalone activity, since Record seems to have plenty of issues on
its own without a big new feature.  There wouldn't be much code
duplication if Panorama doesn't use gstreamer anyway.

Nirav

On Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 9:26 AM, Benjamin M. Schwartz
<bmschwar at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Christoph Derndorfer wrote:
> | Sweet, I totally missed that!
> |
> | Is anyone actively working on integrating that functionality into 'record'
> | or making it available as a seperate activity?
> |
> | Christoph
> |
>
> See http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/sugar/2008-February/004307.html
>
> The Panorama Activity is snot quite barely functional.  It might be best
> to roll this functionality into Record, and Erik Blankinship has expressed
> some interest in that.  However, Record's UI is very unusual, and I am not
> about to attempt integration with it myself.  Also, as you can see in the
> examples, this process is only likely to work well once the camera's
> automatic white balance and gain control are deactivated.  The only way I
> know how to do that is to run in Bayer mode.  Bayer mode was introduced in
> a recent gstreamer, but gstreamer was recently downgraded, which leaves me
> without a known reliable way to access Bayer mode.
>
> - --Ben
>
> P.S.  For Bayer mode info, see
> http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2008-February/011029.html
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>
> iEYEARECAAYFAkjBM3oACgkQUJT6e6HFtqRowgCfUlngIFr+Gl3jxKRYZAXBNl/x
> 2hEAnAnoDrrvcd+vIHO68aJthULDKAQC
> =cvG0
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>