Free camera software for linux

Camera Life (FDCL) is a system for cataloging your photo collection. Camera Life project gives users the ability to search your archive by albums that you set up, or by directory structure.
Camera life (FDCL) is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
FDCL is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with Chatterbox; see the file LICENSE. If not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA. Or visit http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
Main features:
Self Updating
- When you add photos to the photo directory you specified when installing, FDCL will cache, thumnail and make public all such photos (Administration: File Manager). You can allow certain user classes to maintain your site by editing the photo descriptions and delete photos that suck.
Topic view and Folder View
- On the main page, users are presented with the option of viewing photos by topic or folder. In topic view, albums (collections of like photos) are categorized by topic (ex: People, Things, My Vacataions).
- Folder view is hierrical and based on the directory structure of the photos. When viewing a photo, users are given the option to view others photos in the same topic or folder.
Image deletion
- When viewing a photo, you have the option to delete it. When a user deletes an image, FDCL actually flags it as non-public. An admin has to actually erase it (Administration: File Manager). And when you erase it, FDCL just moves it to the erased folder. FDCL will never rm your photos. With this in mind, it is sensible to allow users to delete offensive images and admins to erase them.
Themes
- You can easily change the look of the entire site by choosing a different theme (Administration: Customize: Themes). Official themes can be downlaoded from http://fdcl.sourceforge.net other themes are available at your local supermarket (or not).
Users
- Users can anonyously sign up an account. The admins choose which accounts to give privileges to. All authentication is done by random cookies saved in the DB and passwords are salted and hashed.
Logging
- Some actions are logged to the logs table. This is done via the db_log function. You can view the logs (Administration: Log Viewer) and see the audit trail to modifications to the ssytem. You can then rollback specific action (like renaming a photo) by simply choosing the previous state to go back to.
Enhancements:
- This version adds support for Gallery Remote API, microformats, sitemaps, OpenSearch, and RSS feeds, and supports iPhoto photocasting.
- There are now photo keywords with a del.icio.us-like keyword editor.
- Checkpoints allow you to review and approve changes to the site.
- Your users can now order prints online.
- There are also big changes under the hood and some security enhancements.

Camera Monitor is a little tray system icon that notifies you when your Webcam is on. The project is designed for the GNOME desktop, but will work as well on KDE and XFCE.
Camera Monitor is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
Installation:
tar xzf laptoptemp-0.2.tar.gz
cd cameramonitor-0.1
./configure
sudo make install
Enhancements:
- Added support for libnotify
- Ported to new gtk.StatusIcon
- Updated preferences panel
- Updated about information
- Removed notification on bad previous exit
- Added option to preferences for autostarting cameramonitor every session

Python Traffic Analyzer is a Python base class and sample driver script written to retrieve and manipulate images from the TrafficLand cameras and calculate a numeric value representing the current traffic flow.

PyTrAn, an example driver script, an image collector and an image mask creator are available for download from the link shown at the bottom. To use the PyTrAn package begin by choosing a camera that you wish to analyze, for this example well use the camera captioned above.

We want to construct a mask over the area of the image that we are interested in, namely the road. In this particular example the road takes up the majority of the image but that is not always the case.

We will apply the mask over captured images to fine tune the area over which we are looking for movement. To create the mask we will first need to collect a sequential series of snapshots from the target camera. The image_collector.py script was written for this task:

$ mkdir mask_200003
$ cd mask_200003
$ ../image_collector.py 200003 30
Collecting 30 images...
30

Done.

The script is hard coded to capture images on a 2-second delay. The delay is necessary to ensure the image has changed. I believe 2-seconds to be the absolute minimum. Once complete, 30 images numbered 1 through 30 will be created in the current directory.

We construct a mask from these captured images by creating a diff-image for each sequential image pair and then adding each diff-image together. Naturally, a script was written to automate this task as well:

$ ../mask_maker.py 1 30
Creating a diff for each sequential image pair.
Diffing 29

Creating the initial mask from the first image pair.

Adding the rest of the diffs to the mask.
Masking 29

Done.

A number of .diff files are generated in this process. These files repesent the movement between individual sequence pairs.

The .diff files are simply intermediary files, the important bit is the mask file, which is generated as the sum of all differences.

The mask file may be dirty (as in this case) and require manual cleanup. The basic shape of the road however is clearly visible, evidence that we can with minimal effort automate the mask generation process. Also, this run was conducted at night, day-time images yield better results.

There are a few final steps we need to take before we can use the example PyTrAn driver script. First we need to convert the mask to ASCII (noraw) format:

$ pnmnoraw mask > mask_200003.ascii

Then we need to open an ImageMagick display window and get its X-window-ID using xwininfo. Finally, update camera_id and window_id in pytran_sampling.py and launch the driver:

$ ../pytran_sampling.py
DEBUG> grabbing frame from camera 200003
DEBUG> rotating image: pytran.this > pytran.last
DEBUG> refreshing image in 3 secs
taking a 5 minute sample at various thresholds.
DEBUG> grabbing frame from camera 200003
DEBUG> generating frame diff on pytran.last, pytran.this
DEBUG> displaying image: pytran.diff
DEBUG> converting pytran.diff to ascii
DEBUG> calculating traffic ratio...
ratio[5]: 55%
DEBUG> calculating traffic ratio...
ratio[10]: 52%
...
...
5 minute sample[5]: 67.88
5 minute sample[10]: 42.66
5 minute sample[15]: 30.57
5 minute sample[20]: 23.03
5 minute sample[25]: 18.39
5 minute sample[30]: 14.79
5 minute sample[35]: 12.42
5 minute sample[40]: 10.53
5 minute sample[45]: 9.06
5 minute sample[50]: 7.85

The sampling script will take 5 minute samples at varying color thresholds. The optimal threshold must be manually chosen. Furthermore, you will need to sample the traffic ratios during both heavy and light traffic times to get a good feel for your acceptable range. Also, keep in mind that the traffic ratio value is simply the percent change detected, or in other words the movement detected within the masked region. This means that a completely empty road will register similar values to a road so congested it looks like a parking lot. The time of day can be combined with the traffic ration to determine the logical truth.

With this task implemented and abstracted more complex systems can be built. When I find the time Id like to create a system that will take multiple potential travel routes and times, and during the travel time e-mail the traveler with the best route to take. Another idea I had would be to record the traffic flow values for each camera, for each day and for each half hour interval. Travelers and other interested parties can then analyze traffic patterns to determine the fastest route dependant on date/time.

Remote Capture for Canon PowerShot cameras project is a tool for controlling Canon PowerShot cameras.
The following cameras were reported to work with Capture. Please send a report to extend the list.
Canon PowerShot S50
Canon PowerShot A60
Canon PowerShot A70
Canon PowerShot A75
Canon PowerShot A80
Canon PowerShot A85
Canon PowerShot A95
Canon PowerShot A510
Canon PowerShot A520
Canon PowerShot G6
Canon Digital IXUS 400 (aka PowerShot S400)
Canon PowerShot S410
Canon PowerShot S500
The main advantage of Capture over gPhoto is that the consecutive shots are taken without the camera lenses being closed and opened again. When taking several thousand shots in a row, this indeed lets the camera live longer.
Enhancements:
- This release adds some minor enhancements and fixes.
- The code is stable.

Cammgr manages a collection of web cameras. It will bring cameras online or offline, and initiate or suspend image capture operations.
Any camera can be controlled provided a driver is available. Cammgr supports multiple images per camera, default images for inactive cameras, per- user/host/camera notifications, and an easy-to- use configuration file.
Cammgr can scan Apache log files to auto-initiate image capture, and tune capture frequency can to the minimum needed to ensure that clients receive a new image on request.
Enhancements:
- Support for Axis network cameras was added.
- A bug where the pipe file descriptor was left open across shell exec was fixed.
- A client capture manager from where all capture processes are dispatched and monitored was created.
- A bug where the capture process did not go away when cammgr exited was fixed.
- Other miscellaneous cleanups were done.

iCam2 is a webcam application built around Video4Linux and Imlib2. The purpose for creating iCam2 was that, after (finally!) getting my parallel-port QuickCam VC operating, I needed some software to make use of it, but the only programs readily available either didnt support all the features I wanted, or required a camera that supports mmap(), which mine (currently) does not..

So, after spending some time tweaking the webcam application that is shipped as a part of the xawtv package, I decided to set out and create my own app. And this is it.

The primary design goals of this application are:

1) Provide an extensible, flexible, and quality webcam application.
2) Allow the app to run with an X11-preview interface. This used to be a three-window interface, but that annoyed me to no end, so now it is one window that shows a realtime image from your camera, after all applicable post-processing.
3) Provide a dynamic interface to plugins and filters. Check out SDLcam if you want to know why I think filters are cool. :)

wavextract is a program for extracting embedded audio data from JPEG images. wavextract project is useful if you have a digital camera that can record audio notes and embed them in photos (e.g. HP, Kodak, Fujifilm, Canon, etc.)

Wavextract is written in Python and is tested on Linux (but it should probably
work also on other operating systems).

You must have Python 2.4 (maybe it will work also with Python 2.3, but I didnt
test it) and Python Imaging Library (PIL) installed.

Kamera is a digital camera io_slave for KDE which uses gphoto2 and libgpio to allow access to your cameras pictures with the URL camera:/

This package is part of the official KDE graphics module.

KDE is a powerful Open Source graphical desktop environment for Unix workstations. It combines ease of use, contemporary functionality, and outstanding graphical design with the technological superiority of the Unix operating system.