Thanks for the advice. It's certainly true that it's tough to beat the human eye in image processing. And as long as there are more people than jobs in the third world, robotics in general is not going to be cost-effective.
But we're doing experiments that generate dynamical patterns, it's not a production thing, at least not yet. I'm the electronics guy, and help with the image processing software, we have a more-or-less working system.
We ended up using lua as a scripting language, though still we mostly write in C, it's maybe just as convenient with today's fast compilers. If I were to do it again, I might look at something called "ipython", which supposedly has a very nice shell interface, logging facilities, etc. Lua doesn't have this, but it's so small that you can add stuff in easily, and the user group is very helpful. It's been a time sink, though, the jury is still out.
A lot of people swear by Matlab, but we're more in the reinvent-the-wheel school of thought. One thing we've done is interface a wireless gaming joystick to our setup, so we can focus the scope, run the stage, change filters, take pictures, and run other equipment, all from one unit. The mac we use works well for us, it's a 1.4 GHz dual MMD, one of the last with a standard PCI slot. I believe the new ones exclusively use "PCI express", cards for that standard are vvvery expensive, if they exist at all. Maybe a linux box makes more sense if you're starting a setup these days, but we had the mac hardware.
Of course, the real test if is we can do any good science.
Thanks again,
rob
Simon Slavin wrote: > On 20/08/2006, madiba wrote in message > <1hkdgwu.6akl7ukn6b9cN%down@thekraal.com>: > > > Rob Shaw <rob@haptek.com> wrote: > > > > > We are going to look through a microscope, do image processing, > > > and depending on what we see, move the stage, or adjust other > > > parameters, in real time. > > What you want is probably MatLab. It can do all the image-processing you > want, and it can be used to control an IO card which could make the > adjustments to the microscope you need. You will need at least one > electronics guy to hook up the microscope and one programmer to program > MatLab. > > > Sounds like you want to do automated cytology, as in PAP smears. > > Good luck! Been there, got the T-shirt. Technology can't keep up with > > falling market barriers and influx of cheap labor (or does your PPC + > > software + peripherals cover its costs for little more than the > > equivalent of a bowl of rice/day?) > > I think madiba is probably right for a large-scale project with many > performances of the same task. You'd need a real microscope+computer > setup to do this. It's cheaper to offshore it. However, if you can > develop your idea to the point where the hardware becomes cheaper, it > might be a player. > > Simon. > -- > http://www.hearsay.demon.co.uk
