Introduction¶
BIAS - Basic Image Acquisition Software
BIAS is a software application for recording video from IEEE 1394 and USB3 Cameras. BIAS was intially designed as image acquisition software for experiments in animial behavior. For example, recording the behavior of fruit flies in a walking arena.
Features¶
BIAS provides the following features:
- Control of camera properties (brightness, shutter, gain, etc.)
- Timed video recordings
- Support for a variety of video file formats (avi,fmf, ufmf, mjpg, raw image files) etc.
- JSON based configuration files
- External control via http commands - start/stop recording, set camera configuration etc.
- A plugin system for machine vision applications and for controlling external instrumentation
- Multiple cameras
- Image alignment tools
- Cross platform - windows, linux
Examples of the BIAS’s basic camera control window is show below.
Preview Tab
Histogram Tab
Plugin system¶
BIAS’s plugin system enables the deveolopment of custom machine vision applications and control of external intrumentation. Plugins can be developed where external instrumentation is triggered based in realtime image processing alogorithms. For exmaple, triggering a laser an object is detected in a particular region of the image.
Example plugin GUI
Backends¶
BIAS support to different backends for accessing the cameras
- Point Grey’s FlyCapture2 http://www.ptgrey.com/flycapture-sdk
- libdc1394 http://damien.douxchamps.net/ieee1394/libdc1394/
Note, BIAS can only use one backend at a time and the software must be compiled for use with the backend.