[Robotgroup] [FWD] Microscope Biology article

[Paul Atkinson]

The original article refers to turning LEDs on and off to attract a
microorganism. As the beasty gets close to the LED, you turn off that LED
and turn on another one which in turn attracts the beasty. I would think a
simple IR beam-break might work, but with liquid and various indices of
refraction of the container and critter, it's probably going to be difficult
to do it reliably.

The other possibility (as you pointed out) is with the camera in the
microscope and subtracting images or detecting motion. I expect either of
these would work, but since I haven't done this before, I'm curious what
software you would use to do the image subtraction?
Any suggestions?

Paul

On 4/3/07, Clendon Gibson <bsandyman at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> If all you want to do is track changes in zone, you don't need a vision
> package.
>
> The package you need only needs to grab images from the USB camera. In
> order to detect gross motion, subtract an old image from a new one. If your
> resultant image is not a uniform shade, then there was motion (or noise).
>
> Picture subtraction is basically where you take a pixel at X,Y from image
> one and the pixel at the same coordinate of the second image and subtract
> the two. The final image shows changes and is a good way to highlight
> motion. (or noise)
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Paul Atkinson <pmatkinson at gmail.com>
> To: The Robot Group Mailing List <robotgroup at puremagic.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, April 3, 2007 4:12:16 PM
> Subject: Re: [Robotgroup] [FWD] Microscope Biology article
>
> I suppose a low tech way to do this might use IR LEDs and detectors to
> sense
> the microorganism crossing a threshold near each white LED. Once the beam
> is
> broken, youcould take some action like turning off the near light and turn
> on a far one. Might be a good project for a Basic Stamp with the PC
> relegated to capturing video.
>
> Also, I did a quick look for shareware with motion detect and USB webcam
> as
> keywords. There are a handful of packages out there that have some
> capability. Best case would be some application that can detect motion in
> different zones and take an action based on the zone.
>
> Paul
>
> On 4/3/07, Clendon Gibson <bsandyman at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > Hi Mike,
> >
> > One package that has all the needed bits is National Instruments Vision.
> > This package is designed as an add on for either NI's LabVIEW, NI's
> > LabWindows CVI or Visual Basic. (I have not checked if this package has
> > support for Visual Basic .Net, but it should.) This stuff is not cheap,
> but
> > it would allow someone to make short work of the described project.
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message ----
> > From: Paul Atkinson <pmatkinson at gmail.com>
> > To: The Robot Group Mailing List <robotgroup at puremagic.com>
> > Sent: Tuesday, April 3, 2007 3:51:13 PM
> > Subject: Re: [Robotgroup] [FWD] Microscope Biology article
> >
> > Mike,
> >
> > Since there is no mention of software in the article, I can only guess.
> > The
> > Intel QX3 microscope design has been acquired by Real Blue, if memory
> > serves. The included software has a paint program and some time-delay
> > capability, but nothing that appears to do image recognition and actions
> > based on that. I believe some of the inexpensive web cams (also USB
> based)
> > have that ability, so I wonder if the web cam software might be
> compatible
> > with the microscope? Perhaps some of the RG folks might have some better
> > suggestions?
> >
> > I own one of the Intel QX3 microscopes and I believe the CD is still
> > around
> > somewhere, if you want to borrow it.
> >
> > You could try contacting the folks that host the original site  and see
> if
> > they can explain "the rest of the story?"
> >
> > Paul
> >
> > On 4/3/07, Def Egge <robodigest at innervate.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > At 07:14  2007/03/30, Paul Atkinson wrote:
> > > >Mike,
> > > >
> > > >Here's the link to the article I mentioned last night.
> > >
> > > [comment trimmed]
> > >
> > > ><
> > http://www.hackaday.com/2007/03/28/microscope-reactive-digital-aquarium/
> > > >
> > http://www.hackaday.com/2007/03/28/microscope-reactive-digital-aquarium/
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >Paul
> > >
> > > OK, what kind of video analysis software is required to make this
> > > sort of thing work?  Is there some off-the-shelf software to
> > > accomplish this for M$ Windoze or Linux that is cheap or open source?
> > >
> > >
> > > All the best....
> > >
> > > Mike
> > >
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