[sugar] [Activities] Camera raw mode (WAS: Panorama activity)

[Nirav Patel]

It supports Bayer RGGB8, which should be basically unprocessed data
off of the CMOS.  I can't imagine it being useful though.  It would
require unBayerizing it to display, even though the XO's display is
also Bayer (I assume pixel offsets and swizzling would mess it up,
even if the colors are in the same order).  You're better off letting
the camera do the heavy processing and just get packed RGB back.

Nirav

On Sat, Sep 6, 2008 at 10:15 AM, Christoph Derndorfer
<christoph.derndorfer at gmail.com> wrote:
> Nirav,
>
> IIRC the camera also supports a RAW mode, right?
>
> Is this another feature that we could integrate into an advanced camera
> activity that also includes the features mentioned below?
>
> Thanks,
> Christoph
>
> On Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 4:26 PM, Nirav Patel <olpc at spongezone.net> wrote:
>>
>> 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:
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>> > 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
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>
>
>
> --
> Christoph Derndorfer
> co-editor, olpcnews
> url: www.olpcnews.com
> e-mail: christoph at olpcnews.com
>