Firefly 1.0.0.69 Now Available

It's been entirely too long since my last update, but I'm proud to announce that a new version of Firefly (1.0.0.69) is now available! There are a lot of new features and components with a few bug fixes as well.

If you want to jump straight in, you can download the latest build from the Firefly website or from Food4Rhino project page. Or, if you'd rather learn more about all the new features, keep reading!

Improved Arduino Support

The Firefly Firmata (Arduino Sketch) has gone through a massive overhaul - making it much more compact, efficient, and extensible. The sketch is now just over 230 lines of code (compared to more than 500 in the previous version). But more importantly, the firmata is now more extensible; making it easier to add support for new Arduino boards... Like what you ask? Well, support for the new Arduino Due platform for example. The Arduino Due is an advanced board and while it may look similar to the Arduino Mega... it's actually quite different under the hood. It features an ARM Cortex-M3 CPU which means its really fast. It also features 12-bit analog resolution for reading and writing (which is pretty awesome). As I said, the Due is a more advanced board and it does require some caution when getting started. You can find out more about the Due platform at the Arduino Due Getting Started page.

One of the biggest changes with the revision of the Firmata was that it required some structural changes with how the data is sent/received from Grasshopper. So, if you are planning on using the latest version of the Firmata, you'll need to also have the latest Firefly components installed as well. This shouldn't be an issue because the installer will place the new Firefly Firmata in your sketchbook folder and install the new components as well... but it's worth noting so you don't try to mix and match the versions.

Kinect Version 2 Support

Earlier this summer, Microsoft released a new and improved version of its popular Kinect motion tracking sensor. The sensor includes better body, hand, and joint orientation, 1080p color video (1920x1080), depth video (512x424), and a new active infrared video (512x424). The sensor now has the capability to track up to 6 people at once (compared to only two people with the previous version).

This build of Firefly now comes with three new components to work with this new sensor. The Video Stream can access the color, depth, and infrared video streams at different resolutions. Simply right-click on the video component to choose the video feed and resolution. Note: You may need to update your graphics card in order to get the infrared video stream to work properly (at least I did before it began working properly). The Skeleton Tracker is similar to the previous version, but can now track up to 6 people. And the Mesh Reconstruction component will build a fully colored 3D mesh using the color and depth data from the sensor. I plan to add more components to this section soon, but I wanted to go ahead and release this so more people could use it! [EDIT: I would like to thank Panagiotis Michalatos for his collaboration in the development of the Kinect V2 tools].

New Computer Vision Tools

This release also includes a number of new computer vision tools. One component to note is the Bitmap Tracer, which can be seen in action here. The Bitmap Tracer component spawns a number of randomly generated particles which trace the edges of a bitmap using the nearest contouring vector. Another pair of components is the Bitmap Decompose/Recompose which can either decompose or reconstruct a bitmap using a list of values for its constituent channels. These two can be used together to swap channels in an image (think chroma keying). There's also a Bitmap Threshold component which uses the average dithering algorithm to find the color quantization of an image. Lastly, I've updated the Leap Motion Finger Tracking component to work with the latest release of the Leap v2.2.1 software release. The component now has improved finger tracking including joint and bone position/orientation.

In addition to these new features, there's also a number of bug fixes too (check out the readme if your interested). As always, I welcome any and all feedback on this build. Your support really helps, so please let me know what you think!

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Andy Payne on January 7, 2015 at 7:59am

Here is a link to the 32bit files you'll need that doesn't include an installer (manual installation): https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/22255624/Firefly.Installer/Fire...

You'll need to copy/paste the files in the Libraries folder into your Grasshopper Libraries folder (making sure to remove any previous versions). And the folders inside the Arduino folder need to go in your sketchbook folder (usually found under MyDocuments/Arduino). Hopefully this helps.

Permalink Reply by Daniel González Abalde on January 7, 2015 at 8:20am

Works.
Thanks Andy :)

Permalink Reply by Andy Payne on January 7, 2015 at 8:20am

Great.

Permalink Reply by Juan Sepulveda on January 12, 2015 at 4:11am

Hi Andy,

Could you please share the 64bit files as well? I'm also having trouble with the installer. Thanks!

Permalink Reply by Andy Payne on January 12, 2015 at 6:43am

Hi Juan. Here is the 64bit version (with no installer). Let me know if you run into any installation issues.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/22255624/Firefly.Installer/Fire...

Permalink Reply by Juan Sepulveda on January 12, 2015 at 9:46am

Hi Andy, it works fine now, thank you!

Permalink Reply by scotland simon on June 22, 2015 at 10:32am

Incase any one facing the " This installation package is not supported" problem,
use the file Andy Payne provided,
If you don't know how to use the files,follow these instructions:

you will find two folder in the zip file "Arduino,Libraries"

-First copy the files in Libraries folder to grasshopper components folder

-To open grasshopper components folder,open rhino then open grasshopper then
File > Special Folders > Components Folder

-For every file you copy to components folder
Right-click the file > Properties > make sure there is no "blocked" text
press "Unblock" then "Apply"

-Restart Rhino and Grasshopper

************************************************

-Second copy files in Arduino folder to your arduino sketchbook folder
usually will be Documents\Arduino

That's all enjoy :)

Permalink Reply by ng5 Alex on January 14, 2015 at 5:33pm

Hello Daniel

there are some sound cards that support playing back and recording sound without having to use a mic. But there were complaints from the music industry about rights (imagine youtube video playing and recording at the same time the track), so the sound card drivers stopped supporting it.

an alternative is the following (Virtual audio cable)

http://software.muzychenko.net/eng/vac.htm

cheers

alex

Permalink Reply by Jonah Hawk on January 14, 2015 at 5:19pm

The installer worked fine for me but the Frequency Spectrum component fails.

I have Rhino Version 5 SR10 64-bit and GH 0.9.0076

Permalink Reply by Andy Payne on January 14, 2015 at 5:33pm

Hi Jonah,

That message is strange as it works fine on my machine (and nothing changed with that component since the last revision). Is it possible that you don't have a working microphone on your machine?

Permalink Reply by Jonah Hawk on January 14, 2015 at 5:36pm

That could be the issue. I also get an error regarding webcam component when GH first loads. I'll sort it out.

Thanks

Permalink Reply by Andy Payne on January 14, 2015 at 5:39pm

Yes, ideally you should have a webcam and microphone connected to your machine. If you don't have an integrated one, a cheap USB one should work just fine. My hunch is that the C_Sawapan_Media library (which I use to connect to webcams and microphones) is failing and causing the graphics pipeline to complain. I can try to put some catches in the code to look for this exception (although I have looked for this in the past and it continues to elude me).... but let me know if connecting a webcam and/or microphone helps the situation. Also, were you able to actually get the 64-bit version installed on your machine?