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