Firefly 1.0066 and Kinect 0.0003 Now Available

I am excited to release a new build for both the Firefly core toolset and the Kinect related components. Firefly 1.0066 has several new computer vision components including: Accumulative Exposure, Flip Image, Resize Image, and Image Region. In addition, The Webcam Video Stream and Video Input components now have settings to control the output resolution. Supported sizes include (640x480; 480x360; 360x240; 240x180; 160x120; 80x60; 40x30). There is also a new smoothing algorithm (Temporal Smoothing) component added to the Utility Tab. This component converges on a smoothed numeric value based on a weighted distribution of past observations and the current incoming value. The Code Generator library has also been updated to reflect this addition.

A lot of work has also gone updating the Firefly Kinect components to be compatible with the latest Kinect SDK (v. 1.0) released in February, 2012. This release includes updates to the Skeleton Tracker, as well as new components for Video Streaming, Depth Streaming, and Depth To Point Cloud. Baking the point cloud created by the Depth To Point component and you've got a 3D scanner!

Known issues: The C_sawapan_media.dll library will not work properly on 64-bit applications, thus you will not be able to use either the WebCam Video Stream or Video Input components on Rhino 5.0 64-bit. According to my tests, it should still work fine in Rhino 5.0 32-bit and Rhino 4.0. All other components (besides the two video input components listed above) should work fine on Rhino 4.0 and Rhino 5.0 (32-bit and 64-bit) versions.

To download the latest build of Firefly visit:

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Comment by davide ventura on September 9, 2013 at 8:46am: Thanks Andy, the problem is solved!

Comment by Andy Payne on September 5, 2013 at 8:11am: @davide. The latest version of Firefly is 1.0.0.68. Can you install this version and let me know if you are still having trouble.
Thanks,
Andy

Comment by davide ventura on September 5, 2013 at 3:57am: Hi, I need a Help, I installed firefly 1.0067 but kinect's commands don't get out,..why? Thanks

Comment by Brian Harms on March 14, 2012 at 11:04am: I just bought a kinect without knowing there was an imminent firefly kinect release... Merry christmas to me :)

Thanks Andy!

Comment by Andy Payne on March 14, 2012 at 9:15am: Right now, only the WebCam, Video Input, and Kinect Color and Depth Stream components return Firefly Bitmaps. I haven't yet implemented individual bitmaps (.jpg, .png, etc.) but I can see the benefit of this and it's something I'll probably try to work into the next release so that you could use a lot of the same filtering techniques on still images. Obviously some of the tools are specific to video input (ie. video analysis, optical flow, etc.) but still images could be very useful too. I'll definitely look into adding this functionality. Thanks for the suggestion.

Comment by Danny Boyes on March 14, 2012 at 9:11am: Thanks Andy

Does a Firefly Bitmap only come from the Web Cam and Video component or is there a way to get just a normal bitmap/png/jpg etc in to GH

Comment by Andy Payne on March 14, 2012 at 6:38am: Hi Danny,

No, the Arduino IDE does not need to be installed in order to use the Computer Vision tools. It's only needed if you want to work with some of the Arduino & I/O tools. The Bitmap Painter doesn't actually create a bitmap. It takes a Firefly Bitmap as an input, and then figures out how to draw those pixels on the screen. It outputs the same bitmap that is coming into it, so it isn't really creating a new bitmap. However,each time you pass a Bitmap through a filter, it usually creates a copy of the incoming bitmap (preserving the original image, and then only modifying the new one). It's a little more memory intensive, but this way you can pass a bitmap through a lot of different filters without changing the original or source image. Hope this helps.

PS, thanks for the complements on the icons. To be honest, that's the hardest (or at least most time consuming part of the development process). I don't know how David does it :) In my opinion, the visual appeal of Grasshopper is equally as impressive as all of the unique functions it can do.

Comment by Danny Boyes on March 14, 2012 at 6:02am: Hi Andy,

Is the Arduino IDE necessary for just the Vision Components?

Does the Bitmap Painter component open a Bitmap or create a bitmap?

Your icons are looking very impressive.