Hi everyone,

OpenMV IDE v2.5.0 Released

A new version of OpenMV IDE has been released with a new feature called the Dataset Editor! With the Dataset Editor you can now quickly and easily capture images with your OpenMV Cam for training a Image Classifier Tensor Flow Lite CNN. For more information watch the video below:

For training a CNN we're going to be partnering with Edge Impulse to deliver this capability. We'll have more news about training CNNs in the cloud soon. For now, you can start easily making datasets using OpenMV IDE!

Bug Fixes

OpenMV IDE v2.5.0 also incorporates a lot of bug fixes!

• There's a download progress bar on installing resources now.
• We switched DFU support to using DFU Util.
• DFU/FFMPEG status output in a terminal window appears now.
• Centering of the frame buffer when not zooming is fixed.
• Desktop shortcut install on Windows and the Rasberry Pi.
• Many Bad Translations have been fixed.
• Focus Stealing on Linux when updating firmware is fixed.
• And more!

We expect to release OpenMV IDE v2.5.1 soon to address many more open bugs on github. So, if you see an issue please submit a bug report about it on GitHub so we can get it fixed.

GitHub Sponsorship

Finally, please signup to sponsor us on GitHub! We've been paying Larry to work on adding high performance bilinear and bicubic scaling support which will come out soon. Once the code is ready we'll add scaling option support to many of the methods in our firmware. For example, you'll be able to scale up 32x24 thermal images taken with an MLX90640 using bicubic scaling and overlay that thermal image on visual data for high quality thermal image rendering. Or, apply bilinear/bicubic scaling to lens correction for a better quality image. If you like seeing advanced features like this come to the OpenMV Cam, with impressive performance numbers, then please consider sponsoring us on GitHub.

Hi folks,

Lots of work got done last month. But first:

GitHub Sponsorship

Do you like how much our firmware has improved since the start of the year? Would you like it to continue to improve rapidly? Well, now you can directly support OpenMV on GitHub.

By signing up as a monthly sponsor of OpenMV you can help pay for continuous software optimization. Your funds will help us retain the skills of professionals like Larry Bank who's been doubling and quadrupling the speed of our code.

Like all other businesses... the economic downturn has affected our revenue - greatly, and every extra dollar helps. Please consider sponsoring us on GitHub.

Firmware v3.6.4 Released

We've been working hard on our sensor driver code to make it a lot faster. Once you download and install v3.6.4 on your OpenMV Cam H7 you should notice the default frame rate jump from 75 FPS to 150 FPS, and on the OpenMV Cam H7 Plus the default frame rate should increase from 25 FPS to 50 FPS.

We were able to 2X the frame rate by rewriting our sensor driver to be able to capture every frame from the camera. Additionally, we're working on double buffering support now to lock in this 2X speed gain for more processing loads.

On the OV5640 driver development side of things we've finally got the camera running at maximum speed. We're able to push:

• 2592x1944 - GRAYSCALE (1 BPP) @ 15 FPS == ‭~76MB/s
• 2592x1944 - RGB565 (2 BPP) @ 7.5 FPS == ‭~76MB/s
• 2592x1944 - BAYER (1 BPP) @ 15 FPS == ‭~76MB/s
• 2592x1944 - JPEG @ 15 FPS == ~10MB/s

Which is right at the limit of 80 MB/s that the STM32H7 DCMI bus can handle. Also, note that with the new SET_READOUT_WINDOW IOCTL you can reduce the OV5640's field-of-view to massively increase the frame rate to 240 FPS.

Finally, the new firmware updates our TensorFlow code with floating point layer input/output support. Most networks seems to actually run on the OpenMV Cam H7 and OpenMV Cam H7 Plus now. Please try running a model onboard now and let us know if things are still broken.

Anyway, firmware v3.6.4 has been released to OpenMV IDE and you should be able to download and install it easily.

RTSP Support

New in firmware v3.6.4 is RTSP support. If you have an OpenMV Cam H7 Plus with a WiFi shield you can now turn your OpenMV Cam into an IP Cam. RTSP support is implemented through a frozen MicroPython library compiled into your OpenMV Cam's firmware image.

With firmware v3.6.4 I was able to stream 1920x1080 video at 10 FPS to VLC on my computer. Once we get double buffering support working we should be able to increase that to 20 FPS (and maybe higher by setting the readout window).

Also, I haven't gotten a haircut in months.

Anyway, that's all folks! We'll have more updates next month. In particular, a new release of OpenMV IDE with a lot of improvements.

Hi Folks, shipping has been slow out of China lately. I asked the our logistics company about this and they replied with this image.

Enough said I guess.

Shipping is so overloaded coming out of China that they are using passenger aircraft for cargo.

So, we will do out best to get OpenMV Cams out to folks... but, we are not the priority right now. Personal Protective Equipment is.

Sate safe out there,

Kwabena