| Version 5 Copyright 2008 to 2011
Application
What Type of Applications can this software can be used for:
- Security - Companies can check that the pictures on their computer are the type of pictures they would expect on their computers. Also see below the new webcam motion detection function.
- Parents - again parents could use this software to check what pictures are on their computers, check that your children are not downloading unsuitable images. Today with the Internet you never know who is downloading pictures to your computer. For instance when browsing the Internet all pictures are stored in a temporary location on you hard drive. This software is ideal for checking what is on your hard drive.
- Photography, if you are a photographer with hundreds of thousands of pictures on your computer and you wish to find similar pictures that you have taken in the past, but cannot recall where you put them, this is the ideal software for that purpose, if you have pictures stored on backup drives then again this is ideal.
- Industry - any application that needs to identify very similar images or duplicate pictures. There are a huge amount of applications that save pictures to your hard drive. This software can check given an image if there are similar images on a computer hard drive.
- Scanned Documents in a picture format- it can distinguish between documents so if you have an exact document in an image (picture) format and you scan an identical document into you computer and create a sample it will be able to find that document on your computer or other network computers. It can even find the same image even if there are say added words to the same form. Therefore just because the form has handwriting on it, that should not stop it from being found.
- Organise and group your Pictures from ANY LOCATION ON THE HARD DRIVE and group similar pictures say of vehicles into one folder location. This has been added to Version 3 because of USER FEEDBACK.
- Big backup drive picture recognition search - some companies and many people make very large backups of hundreds of thousands of pictures. Impossible to search through your backup drive or drives to find pictures taken a long time ago this is the ideal software for searching out lots of pictures on backup drives.
- Webcam motion detection - this new feature allows you to connect a web-cam for motion detection or just take a snap shot of anything your viewing via the web-cam. From bird watching to astronomy using a telescope you can have some very interesting photos. I have found that using a web-cam with auto focus is an easy way to get good results without having to take the camera apart to to fit the telescope. You can also get fair results from an ordinary pair of binoculars. What makes this more interesting is that its all in real time with a large computer screen view.
New Applications for these new functions in Version 5
Time Laps Motion Detection for Pictures
Motion or objects moving through a background. Researchers often wish to study a certain area and see how that area changes. For instance if you are researching how many ships leave a certain port during a 24 hour period you can set up a digital camera at a location and take photos say every 30 seconds using an intervalometer. However you would have several thousand pictures to view and if left over a day or so this could be 60 or 70 thousand pictures. However you only wish to look at the pictures that have a new object in it like a ship going through a certain part of a harbour or dock.
You maybe someone who is just interested in taking photos of bird life from your back garden. Using a Camera on a Tripod you could set it up to take several thousand photos over several hours maybe at 15 seconds a photo. The picture recognition software motion detection would be able to show you which pictures have new objects pass through that background location.
You can also turn Time Laps On if so instead of picking up objects that pass through the background of the picture the background will rotate and new changes in the background will be displayed therefore small changes can be ignored by setting the object mass level.
Picture Analysis Function
Sometimes its important to distinguish how different two pictures are from each other. With this general picture recognition software you can now analyse two pictures and see how different they are. For instance you may take a photo of a location say 6 months ago and have a current picture just taken of the same location. As long as you are roughly in the same location when you took the first image you can analyse how both those images have changed over time. The software will highlight the changes in yellow and you can reduce the amount of yellow to identify the bigger changes within the picture.
Web Cam Motion Detection
This is going to act in the same way as using Time Laps object detection but it will use advanced motion detection for Web Cams and Security Cams. The time delay between capture is only limited to the speed of the web cam and the speed of the computer. For fastest results the computer needs to be a high spec model. The motion detection itself is very advanced, for instance you can set it up only to detect a cetain area of the live feed so even if you have motion you do not wish to detect in the frame you can focus only on the area you wish to detect. This is good if you have lots of trees or flowers or anything else that moves naturally near by that you do not wish to detect. It is also possible to set the mass of the object you wish to detect. For instance if you only wish to detect cars on a road but wish not to detect say dogs, cats or birds then you can increase the mass of the object so it only detects a car or other very lage vehicle. Also you can allow it to deal with large changes in light by keeping the auto light level on. There is also auto calibration, this will re-calibrate all the parameters if the camera is moved. The software even goes further you can move the camera around and once it realised the camera has moved to new view location the software will lock onto that new location automatically using auto position detect.
Security Implications
This is a very cheap way of finding out what is happening around your home just connect webcam put in on your windowsill setup motion detection and allow it to monitor the front of your house. It will give you a good idea who and if anybody is watching your home.
Research
This is a very cheap way of researching certain areas just set up the web cam poin it at say locations where you think there maybe deer and allow the web cam detect motion through that area or part of an area. Maybe you are researching how many fishermen use a certain lake area or how many people canoe through a certain river or how many cars use a certain road. This is a relatively inexpensive way of archieving these goals.
Large View
Sometimes its good to have a more detailed view of a location. You can enlarge the web cam live feed view so that you have a detailed live view of a location. You can capture a feed view from the web cam by clicking enlarge on the menu or click an image for a still view.
Moving your Images Around
The reason why all of these functions are built into the general picture recognition software and not separate application is because it is possible to move the pictures from one function into another function. For instance if you have taken some motion detection and found an interesting picture of something you think you may already have on your hard drive you can then add that image to the picture recognition sample and search for other similar picture you may already have on your computer.
Questions
General picture Recognition Software
Picture Recognition Technology is not 100% accurate. Once this is understood, usually the next question is how accurate is it. The how accurate is it question will take a detailed answer. For a detail explanations see Technical details.
But to try and quickly answer the question, a copy of the same picture is always 100% accurate then the further away the picture is from the original picture the accuracy levels start to drop off. The main goal of this software is not only to find near identical pictures but to try and find the main object within a picture even if the background is completely different. Again it's ability to achieve this is a sliding scale from how close the main objects are within the sample pictures and the searched picture.
The software comes with lots of common samples for example say you are searching for all cars on your hard drive you can just type in Car and select a sample template to search against. Also of-course the user can take their own picture or use a picture already on their hard drive as a sample.
This software is very easy to use in its default mode, You only need to complete three steps:
Select Sample - or Provide your own from off your hard drive.
Select the search area E.g. C:\drive
Select Run
Advanced features:
There are lots of options that allow searching from landscape to Narrow objects search within pictures. This is true picture recognition. The software uses autonomous and real thinking and learns from previous users around the world who have used the software to search for certain items. For example if person A in USA has searched for a CAR and then you search for a CAR it will not only use the sample that you have selected but will use the knowledge gained when searching for a car in the USA. Whenever a user searches for something (unless they turn Internet search off) the software will upload to my server a very small amount of information relating the users A's match in the USA. This information can then be used by your general picture recognition software to help provide you with different types of the same object. This could be castles, windmills, anything really. Please note the information used to achieve this only uses analysis information generated by the software. It does not take any information from a picture that can reproduce any part of a picture. However by leaving Internet info on it will help improve accuracy levels.
Apart from the changes with the general picture recognition engine there have been added some new features required by user feedback. These features on their own are quite ordinary but with the ability to feed them into the picture recognition engine for further analysis makes it very interesting indeed.
NEW FEATURES IN VERSION 5
The new features available in this new standard version 5 includes some very interesting new functions that are a natural extension to Picture Recognition.
Now you can use Motion Detection that detects changes in pictures taken over several hours or several days with a camera. There is also a new very powerful Web Cam Motion Detection function using real time, built into the picture recognition software and a new analysis function that allows you to compare the differences in two similar pictures in detail, from every pixel difference to main object differences within the picture.
Changes made to the picture recognition search engine
Picture Recognition - the main function of this software is general picture recognition. This software is designed to find the main object inside a picture or find a particular type of landscape. The user can type in Car, House, Beach, Lighthouse and allow it to search for that object inside a picture. You can also load in your own sample pictures and it will search for the same object in your picture and see if there are any other pictures with that object. This is true general picture recognition software.
Context Picture Recognition - is now incorporated into the general picture recognition software in version 5. This means that you can select it to search for images if you already have a fair idea of that pictures context. You can now use sample images that match the context you wish to search for and the picture recognition software will home in on the pictures context. This reduces redundancy or false negatives. The downside is if the context is different from the sample image it will miss that image. However Context can be turned on and off. In some cases it is very useful indeed in others it is best left off.
New Features Required by Users From User Feedback
All the features below work of very advanced motion detection using input via WebCams or Pictures. It allows you to detection motion and stores pictures when motion is detected. It possible to then use the Picture Recognition to check if you have ever stored those pictures before.
New - in version 5 there is built into the "General Picture Recognition Software" a new feature incorporated because of user feedback. This new feature has many applications and is a little different from picture recognition that is attempting to find a similar picture. This new feature will tell you when there is a change within the original photo or background photo. The software will display the differences in the two photos by highlighting them in yellow. The usage for this new feature in applications are huge. See: Error Detection Analysis In Photos below for more information.
Time Laps Photography - for photography it will find changes in object for time laps. You can change the parameter to make it more or less sensitive to the original photo or background. All you need to do is turn of any Auto functions. Set things up manually and it will ignore some motion while grabbing the motion you require. It can do this by only grabbing images that meet certain motion requirements.
Change of Object in the Picture - For people who do research or people who wish to get interesting photos of animals or bird life over several hours or several days using an intervalometer connected to a digital camera that may take say 6 photos a minute. You will find that over just a 12 hour period you would have 8640 pictures and maybe only 200 would actually have an object in it like a bird or some type of animal etc. Instead of having to look through so many images you can let the "General Picture Recognition Software" list all the pictures where the background has changed.
Error Detection Analysis In Photos - if you have two of the same photos and need to distinguish where any errors between two photos exist then this software can do this down to near 1 pixel range for two identical photos that are taken using a fixed camera on a tripod. Distance, size, lighting, etc everything will need to approximately the same apart from the actual error in the graphic itself. If you can pre-set all these parameters with zero shudder or movement the software should be able to identify very slight changes in two near identical images. If any of these parameters change then the software will highlight every change on that picture in yellow. Error detection is very sensitive and will not work well if taken by hand you will need to use a tripod for best results. There is an analytical error detection tool (does not search only compares.) However if you use the object in background search. This features this will give a similar outcome. The search feature for all of these methods is limited to a single folder. This is because all of the same types of picture would be stored in a single folder. Each folder may have 8000 images of the same location. Therefore any differences in near identical images would be flagged. When using the Analytical error detection tool even if the identical images are not in the exact location or there is skew it will still overlay the differences in yellow.
Another Interesting new feature
WebCam Motion Detection - this is an exciting new feature it allows you to detect using a Web Cam connected to your computer or any other Camera that can be captured (PLEASE DOWNLOAD THE FREE WEB CAM TEST SOFTWARE) if it works with your web cam or camera you will be able to use the motion detection function via the web-cam within the Picture Recognition Software. (I CAN CONFIRM THAT THE 1.3 Meg PC-LINE WEB CAM I paid just £6.00 WORKS from PC-World.) The motion detection built into the general picture recognition software is very advanced. Point your webcam at anything you wish to detect and the software will pick up and detect any object that goes through the path of the camera. It is even advanced enough to be used out side and can be calibrated to most conditions. It can even deal with change of light with the Auto Light Change Levels. There is also an Auto Re-Calibrate that Calibrates a change of location for very sensitive accuracy. There is also an auto position change. This is useful if your camera uses a motor to change to different locations say every 10 minutes. After a set time it will update the background picture. Once setup you can leave it 24 hours a day and it will monitor that location. Auto functions can be turned on or off.
Security Camera - Some security cameras may work with this software please download the free web cam test software. In the future more web and normal cameras will work with the software. There can be a time delay between feed and capture, if used for security its more about giving the user feedback on who is hanging around. It is really a very cheap alternative to a professional system however saying that the software motion detection is very complex and works well in very many conditions. Today with the increase in pixel resolution even for web cams; can result in some very clear images.
I have decided to provide some Q and A About the Web Cam and Motion Detection.
Question and Answer for Web Cam
Q) How far away can it detect:
A) Using the new night option right down to one pixel. However there can be no movement or change of light in that location. Location usually under controlled conditions like indoors. For out door detection turn off night mode then the minimum is about 3 pixels but normally about five pixels. Apart from this it is only limited by the range of the web cam or any normal camera with live feed from it.
These are some pictures of a plane flying over a blue sky. The quality is not that good because it is using a 1.3 meg web cam at some distance. Web-cams are limited quality wise to about 100 meters. However if you have a more expensive web-cam say 5 meg the quality at a distance would be improved. These pictures are a photo of a aeroplane taken using this motion detection software.
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Q) Can you limit detection to a certain area of the live feed.
A) Yes, in the image window named "Original or First Background Calibration" a user can set up any area within the live feed to motion detect. All you do is Click on the image and follow the walkthrough help."
Q) Can you let it run say over a week through day then night back to day and night again and so on.
A) Yes, the software auto senses light changes and adjusts the background automatically for motion detection. Within an hour or so it will auto review its setting. Therefore say you have a lightening storm that sends the light sensitivity level through the roof. It will continue to auto adjust after the thunder storm. Back to normal settings. This I say in theory because as yet I have not had the opportunity to test it in a lightening storm.
Q) Does it work in rain.
A) Yes tested, as long as the rain is not too heavy if the camera can see through the rain it will detect objects moving around in the rain. Sensitivity levels may drop a little.
Q) When auto adjusting does it continue to monitor motion.
A) No, the software needs to update this can take about 30 seconds. Motion detection is reactivated automatically. However it can go several hours before it needs to check things like light or calibration. However for best results it auto checks about every hour.
Q) Why after calibration and motion detection is switched on does it start displaying files for a short while without any change or motion.
A) When starting up the Auto Detection system takes over and makes appropriate adjustment; any light or position change. It can take several minutes to settle down just click clear files when it settles down. After this it will mostly give images with motion changes within them. You can just let it run for says several days if you wish and check for usually some very interesting pictures.
Q) Using a web cam does it pick up people walking across it.
A) Yes, but only walking if someone is running then it may not pick them up if they are going directly across the line of the camera view. If they are running directly towards the camera yes it will pick them up.
Q) How long is the Interval between detection.
A) This will depend on the speed of the webcam, computer and software. Depending on all of these factors between 1 and 5 seconds interval. The Interval time can be changed down to about one thousand of a second but taking together all the other factors then 1 to 5 second interval is more realistic. When testing I left it overnight with a small lamp on and it picked up a small spider and snapped pictures about every 20cm apart. My computer is not that fast I think on a fast computer it could be down to less than a second.
Q) Can you move a camera around to different points and it will continue to Auto Detect.
A) Yes, it has a built in auto position change option pre-set to on. If you change the position of the camera you will not have to re-calibrate the auto position function will take care of change of position. However there is a slight delay before the background of the new position is updated. You could in theory set up a motor to stop the camera at certain locations say every 10 minutes. The software would auto adjust to that new position.
Q) Does it work with every web cam.
A) No, currently it is only limited to a couple of tested web-cam, but it seems to work well with microsoft web-cams please see download page for more details.
Q) What format are the motion detection images saved in.
A) The motion detection images are stored or saved to jpg image files. Quality of picture is limited to the web cam and any conversion limitation if any.
Q) Can you save the images to the organiser and can you send them to the general picture recognition part of the software.
A) Yes, you can do both. You could say save a picture of a car say in week 1 and if that car turned up again in week 8 as long as the user saved the original detection using the organiser then you could send it to the general picture recognition part of the system and ask it to see if that image is on your computer. It would be possible to use the compare image to compare two pictures in more detail. So if for instance you were watching deer in year 1 in year two you could use the picture recognition software to find pictures that maybe of that deer and then use the analytical compare to get a more detailed compare. Results would be improved from a recognition point of view if year on year the photos were taken from a fixed camera position.
The web cam is the most interesting new feature but it also gives the user a similar capability if they are using a Normal Digital Stills Camera. Included are the following (free duplication image finder) and the general picture recognition with time laps tools, compare and analyse tool, object detection for still photos and motion detection for web-cams.)
Contact details: gprsg@hotmail.co.uk
My Theory On Image - Vision - Picture Recognition
Eventually all objects will be recognised by computers and will make real sense to the computer program in control. My theory of relative in object idea will eventually allow computer systems to understand and make sense of all objects. This theory will eventually become true reality, this theory is my theory and my theory alone. Version 3 of this software starts this theory of but only with the main object in the picture in itself a very large jump however in the future "relative in object theory" will be the way forward and all roads of thinking will eventually have to comply with this theory.
Please go to the download page from here |
