Re: What are your applications?


JGCASEY wrote:
> >
> > That's correct. Why would I have? Just because
> > they're cheap? Granted, at one time I toyed around
> > with the idea of doing just that to create a
> > burglar alarm system, but some discussions with a
> > friend of mine who did his master's research in
> > image processing convinced me not to waste my time.
>
>
> And what did he say that convinced you it was a
> waste of time? Home webcam software is now used
> for just that purpose.

I was planning on creating a proximity alarm using a camera by
comparing frames and measuring the amount of change from on frame to
the next. Small change? That would be a cat or dog. Big change? Human;
and sound the alarm.

Problem is, at night when a car drives by with its headlights on, for
example, you get big changes as the shadows move across the room.

These problems aren't insurmountable, but they're not the kind of job
you want to do as a hobby. Particularly if you wind up paying fines for
unneedlessly calling the police.

> The number of uses for a webcam are only limited
> by the imagination... maybe that is the limitation
> for some programmers?


Well, and their time and interest. :-)


>
> > ... And most assembly programmers aren't all that
> > interested in playing around with hardware.
>
>
> It was the hardware, electronics, that first got me
> interested in computers. I saw them as one big
> programmable chip. The ability to hit the metal
> was what appealed to me with respect to assembler.

Granted, I do a lot of stuff with hardware too. But the statement above
remains true.

>>
> > 3. Working on the next "world's fastest version of
> > memcpy or strcpy".
> >
> > I list item (3) as a way of poking fun at the
> > situation (reinventing the wheel all the time), but
> > it *is* a typical example of what this newsgroup is
> > (should be) all about -- getting help on the microscopic
> > stuff that combines to make a larger program.
>
>
> And I guess that's where I don't fit in at all.
>
> I am a macroscopic thinker and see programming as a
> means to an end not an end in itself.

I don't want to give the impression that they only program as an end in
and of itself (though many do), just that most posts to a newsgroup
like this one are really to solve some microscopic problem in a larger
program. You never really get to see the big picture in the limited
space of a post around here (e.g., you're not going to see posts of
full applications that are thousands of lines long in a newsgroup).

Cheers,
Randy Hyde

.

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