Strand Camera - low-latency single camera acquisition and tracking software

Strand Camera logo

Strand Camera is free, open-source low-latency camera acquisition and tracking software. It is useful for 2D tracking of animals, robots, or other moving objects. It also serves as the basis for 3D tracking using Braid.

Strand Camera is the successor of fview, and is the result of a rewrite focused on performance, ease of use, and flexibility.

Features

  • Low-latency, marker-free 2D tracking of multiple animals based on high-performance background subtraction.
  • Tracking latency is dominated by image acquisition time, with all aspects of the program written to prioritize low latency image acquisition and processing.
  • Basler USB3 and GigE area cameras are supported
  • Recording of compressed video into MKV files with precise timestamps
  • Post triggering to enable "time travel" to the past. Images are continuously buffered to computer memory and then, if the command is given, this data from the past is used at the start of recording an MKV video to disk.
  • Web based user interface allowing easy remote control
  • Loading of camera settings files saved with the manufacturer-supplied camera application.
  • Integrated Python scripting
    • Python-based image processing (e.g. with DeepLabCut)
    • Python-based control of all user interface elements in the web-based interface.

Documentation

Download

Releases are provided via GitHub.

Supported operating system

Ubuntu Linux (64 bit Intel/AMD) is supported. We test internally on macOS and Windows.

Licensing

Strand Camera is free and open source software.

Support

Support is offered on a best effort basis via the github repository or the online forum. Contact Andrew Straw regarding for potential availability for collaboration or custom development.

Funding

Strand Camera is developed partly via the BeeTracked project which is funded by the the VolkswagenStiftung. Further support comes from the University of Freiburg.