Welcome to Zebra Aurora Vision Studio™
In this tutorial we will take a closer look
at the Filmstrip and OFFLINE Mode features,
available from version 5.2.
In this part, we will cover the following topics:
First, we will look at some basic things
like the changes in the user interface.
Next, we will talk a bit about what do we use the new features for
and explain their main areas of application.
Finally, to get a better feel & understanding of these features,
we will take a look at an example program.
First of all, let's take a quick look at the interface changes related to the new features.
The OFFLINE Mode button is available in the top-right corner of the screen,
next to language and complexity controls.
It can also be activated using the new OFFLINE Mode icon located in the middle section of the Toolbar.
The Filmstrip Control tab is located in the Controls Panel, next to Console, Results and Hints tabs.
Moreover, there is new Filmstrip tool, available in the Image Acquisition section of the Toolbox.
We will cover all these elements in detail in the later parts of this tutorial series.
The OFFLINE Mode and Filmstrip features are used primarily in prototyping algorithms on previously collected data,
when we have no other access to the camera or other devices.
It is often used with images or point cloud but it is not limited to these two data types.
We can also use the control to collect a set of data,
for example, images from one or multiple cameras,
organize it and store for later off-line use.
In order to add some images to the Filmstrip Control,
we need to create a new data channel and select its data type.
We can create a new channel by clicking the add icon.
Next, we can specify the name, supported data type as well as choose channel directory.
In this example, we are working within a dataset called Examples and Tutorials.
Creating and managing Filmstrip datasets will be covered in later parts of this tutorial series.
When our Image channel is ready we can add some images to it.
To do that, simply click the + icon within the square, select all the files you need and you're ready to go.
To acquire images from the Filmstrip Control we will use the Filmstrip tool
This filter has to be places in the ACQUIRE section of the Program Editor.
The warning indicates that we are now in ONLINE mode and we have to remember,
that both this filter and the Filmstrip Control are active only in the OFFLINE mode.
Let's switch to OFFLINE mode and see what happens.
As expected, both elements became active.
We can now preview the images by dragging the outImage output into the preview
and iterate the program a couple of times to cycle through the images in the Filmstrip.
We can also double-click an image thumbnail in the Image channel to jump straight to it.
This allows us to test our algorithm on a desired image with just a single click.
We are now ready to start building our inspection algorithm.
We will not cover this process in detail in this tutorial.
The link to detailed step-by-step inscructions
is included in the video description below.
Our program is finished.
We can test the algorithm on selected images simply by double clicking them in the Filmstrip channel.
We can also run the program in a loop.
To do that, we need to activate loading offline data in a loop mode by clicking its icon.
Last, but not least, let's see how our program behaves if we switch back to ONLINE mode.
As expected, almost all filters became inactive and greyed out.
It is because they use offline data provided by the ReadFilmstrip filter.
Switching to ONLINE mode deactivates this filter along with the Filmstrip.
All the subsequent filters follow this example, because they lack another data source.
We will cover combining ONLINE and OFFLINE data sources in another part of this tutorial series.
If you want to learn more, please take a look at our technical documentation
available at Zebra Aurora Vision™ Developer Portal.
You can find links to the sections of the documentation relevant to this tutorial in the video description below.
Thank you for watching!
For more information on Zebra Aurora Vision™ software products visit us at aurora-vision.zebra.com