roaldarbol / bux

🐞 A simple GUI for running experiments

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bux's Issues

Include RPi cameras

When working on a RPi, the CSI camera is not discoverable by OpenCV (libcamera support is an open issue). Instead, use picamera2 when the OS is Raspberry Pi OS. Append as the last camera.

Scheduled recording

We'll need to be able to schedule recording - both recording time, time between and number of recordings preferably. Have a look at how it's implemented for RPi in Jolle's picamera.

Write serial methods

Uses from mpremote import pyboard - see screenshot:

To list available serial ports, see here
Should preferably be a solution where a serial.write sends a command to begin and end.

(Let's make the serial connection into its own module to be published on PyPi - then others should be able to easily access a serial connection in Tkinter (or other GUI) applications.)

Make tests with `pytest`

Implement OpenCV

VidGear is a wrap-around library that works both for webcams and picamera, can thread multiple processes seamlessly. Idea will be to edit the record_video.py file to manage recording irrespective of the OS.

Camera streams to be in `tkinter` windows

Incorporate `cam_preview` edits into `cam_record`

The edits from commit 90656b2 needs to be entered into cam_record too.

Log for each video, not each camera

Currently, frame numbers will all end in the same log file, even when multiple videos are recorded sequentially from the same camera.

Implement `Belay`

For controlling microcontrollers, Belay will be the chosen direction. Currently, the script establishes the connection to the board which may complicate things a bit as you'll need to tell the script which port to connect to. Could possibly use a class that takes the port as an input, establishes the connection in init, and then has @device.task methods.

Add logging

Look at the logging module.

Specify board type

Running code from micropython or arduino will make a difference. Additionally, I could enable WebREPL support for ESP's and other WiFi-enabled boards.

Spawn new pop-up windows

Would be great to spawn a new window for video streams, adjusting settings, maybe something serial related.

Use VidGear

VidGear looks like it provides a really good frontend - simpler than OpenCV, and really wide support. They're changing to a higher-performing ffmpeg backend. Not currently supporting picamera2, but that can be supported separately until then.

Implement settings file

The issues related to settings are beginning to build up, so it is about time that settings are properly implemented. Should there be a pop-up box, a settings file, ability to save/load settings etc. Can we write generic methods in a settings class?

Handle multiple cameras and serial ports

Can be done with multi-threading, only I'm still not sure what exactly needs to be done and what the UI will look like - but it will be exciting!

Multiple videos recording too slow

Because we're iterating through the camera objects, they record too slow (my guess is at around 50%). Tried briefly with asyncio without luck. I think using threading or multiprocessing is the way (see links).

Add option to specify video format

mp4 and avi. Just add the drop-down menu.

Load `opencv` settings

Make a button for importing settings.

Multiprocessing: Add "poison pill" and synced start

Finishing multiprocessing processes gracefully is a bit intricate. Send something to the queue (one value per process) so shut them down gracefully. Similarly, you can use the queue to synchronise the start of the recordings.

https://pymotw.com/3/multiprocessing/communication.html#multiprocessing-queues

Move serial and camera methods to separate scripts

The serial connection in gui.py needs to be moved. Also this is a test of making issues directly from VSCodium.

Remove terminal output of `OpenCV: camera failed to properly initialize!`

When initializing the app, utils.list_ports() tries to initialize cameras on all channels and throws errors in return for most.

Write documentation

There's both a README and mkdocs to be written for good documentation.

Change to `poetry`

Serial: Keyboard input laggy

In the serial window, the keyboard is laggy when cameras are being previewed.

Only open camera window if cameras are present

Currently, errors are thrown and a tiny window is generated.

Publish to PyPI

poetry has some good documentation on how to do this. Preferably start out with TestPyPI.

Categories in settings file

Currently the toml file doesn't have categories, but it would be a convenient thing to have, making it more understandable. A loop needs to be made which can still access the items().

Camera settings in new window

Would be great if it can automatically populated with the OpenCV parameters that the camera can take on.

Make VideoProcess class

The process needs to exit gracefully. Make a new class which inherits from mp.Process(), and modify the terminate method to do cv2 stuff.

Get system info

Get system info - which platform is being used, which camera driver framework is being used (e.g. v4l2 or av-foundation). Use this information to automatically set possible settings.

Refactor code into front- and backend

Could be either Qt or something that runs in the browser like streamlit.