Labview & IMAQ features vs. version

[jz_007]

Hiya

I was idly wondering if I can compare two photos (from a webcam) and determine if they are the same, or similar.

Lots of posts on that, you might think, but what I want to know is - can I do it with my current version of Labview?

This is an "out-of-interest" project, and if I can do it with my existing LabView v6.1 Full Development System, then great.

Unfortunately, if I know NI, this feature is probably only available in LabView 7.1 Enterprise with the optional Vision Processing Pack, yours for the price of a nearly-new Jag. True?

Are there any alternatives? Maybe someone's written a free workaround? (like the nice gentleman who wrote "LabSQL" to work around the glaring omission of database connectivity)

Many Thanks

Joolz

[Christer]

To acquire images into LabVIEW using a webcam you can either call the drivers supplied by the vendor from LabVIEW or alternatively use the Windows Imaging API. Couple of links where you can find WebCam libraries people have already written.

http://www.cs.unc.edu/~parente/labview/index.shtml
http://www.warwicktech.freeserve.co.uk/lvdownloads.html

Alternatively you can use the Picture Controls that ship with LabVIEW, started to ship with LabVIEW in version 5.1. These VIs will let you open a image and display it as well as extract the image data. If all you want to do is visually compare two images you are done at this point. However, if you want to do image processing without investing in a SW tool to do this I only see two options for you. One is if you already have a image analysis tool where you can call its library directly through LabVIEW via DLLs or Active X. The other is if you have enough of a fundamental knowledge of image processing to take the image data and then write your own image algorithms.

Attached a screenshot of a simple program that uses the Picture Control VIs to open and display an image. I have LabVIEW 7.1 so this is the best I could do for you.

Hope that gives you some information to go on,


Regards,


Christer

[jz_007]

OK thanks - that was pretty much what I suspected, but I just wanted it confirmed.

Many thanks!

Joolz