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Posted by pogo on March 26, 2008, 8:01 pm
Please log in for more thread options > On Mar 26, 5:49 pm, "pogo"
>> I just discovered the Coding4Fun portal (?) at Microsoft.
>>
>> There is an article in the Hardware section on Imag
>> Acquisition using an old Logitech webcam using VB
>> or C#. Pretty cool!
>
> Grabbing images into memory for playing with has sadly
> had little support for a novice programmer such as myself.
I agree. Give us some from the Mightey Casey !!!! :-D
> It is not such a big deal for a professional programmer
> who understands Windows programming, they just don't
> have any interest in wrapping it into a simple function
> for use by a novice.
I would hazard a guess that many, MANY, of the people that use Visual C++ do not
*really* understand Windows programming at all -
they just think they do. There is a ton of initialization and other code -
including the oh-so-fun "message pump" - that VC++ &
its libraries takes care of for you - and you never even have to see it. (for
the most part)
Find some old examples from the original Petzold book to see what I am talking
about. If you can get into that, you are well on
your way to feeling more at ease in the Windows environment. ( Of course, they
went and changed a lot things yet again with
Vista. ) That Petzold book is old enough that you can probably find a decent
used copy somewhere very cheap. You can program
everything in it using a compiler as old as Visual C 1.2 (note that I did not
say Visual C++).
> I have used the Logitech SDK using VC++ but as a novice
> from way back never really got my head around OOP and
> was limited to inserting old fashioned code in a VC++
> program shell.
That's exactly what the Visual environment is all about - having a good bit of
the repetitive work done for you - and providing a
shell to get you started. So, you weren't really "limited" in that respect.
That's what myself and 1000s of other programmers do
every time they use that Microsoft product. Underneath every single bit of the
OOP stuff and MFC classes, etc., is plain old
fashioned procedural code.
As an ancient old programmer that remembers what a KayPro "portable" PC looked
like, it took me longer to use Visual C++ when it
first came out than it did to write the same thing using much more extensive but
familiar plain C code. Once I understood that the
VC++ IDE had hidden a lot of things that I used to do manually, my productivity
went way up.
> At the moment I am using FreeBasic for which someone
> has provided an object to access webcams via Windows.
> The advantage of FreeBasic is you don't have to be
> an expert with years of programming practice. Unlike
> VC++ you can do neat stuff like high speed manipulation
> of pixels without the need for understanding DirectX
> etc yourself.
It was the Logictech SDK that mandated use of the DirectX library, not VC++. It
has its pros and cons. One pro is that that very
same code you are talking about recognizes the built in camera on my new laptop,
while some other very advanced visual software I
have does not.
On the other hand, if you like FreeBasic then go for it! And write the rest of
us some kick-butt visual processing software ---
I'm not proud to use it! :-) I worked in QuickBasic a long time ago back where
the languages were more distinct and it could do
some wonder things!
> Unlike the standard API stuff that came
> with the VC++ tutorials which ran slower than a BASIC
> interpreter!
Surely you are talking about running the VC++ stuff in debugging mode ?
Anyway, my comments were meant to educate rather than trying to preach one
platform or language over another. Hey do what works
for you and to heck with everyone else!
Good luck with everything and keep coming back to the group!
JCD
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>
> There is an article in the Hardware section on Imag
> Acquisition using an old Logitech webcam using VB
> or C#. Pretty cool!