v1.2.0

v1.2.0 adds an in-IDE firmware-flashing workflow with bricked-camera recovery, overhauls the USB/serial transport for reliable communication across Windows, Mac, and Linux, and ships new face-recognition and feature-detection examples. This release stays on Qt Creator 4.0.2 and contains no breaking changes for existing projects.

Highlights

  • Run Bootloader workflow under Tools lets you flash a .bin firmware file, optionally erase the internal file system, and automatically recover bricked cameras via a board-type picker.

  • USB/serial transport overhaul writes each command in a single flush with optional per-command start/end delays, fixing communication reliability on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

  • New examples for LBP face recognition, Canny edge detection, and Hough line finding.

  • Bundled firmware for the OpenMV Cam M4 (OMV2) updated to 1.9.0.

New features

  • Run Bootloader. A new Tools > Run Bootloader menu item provides a full firmware-flashing workflow: pick a .bin firmware file, optionally erase the internal file system, and program the camera. Bricked cameras are recovered automatically through a board-type picker driven by firmware/boards.txt (ac144fbe4, a4b8958ec).

  • New example scripts: LBP-based face recognition (07-Face-Detection/face_recognition.py) and Canny edge detection plus Hough line finding (09-Feature-Detection/edges.py and lines.py) (f3c291310).

Other changes and improvements

  • The bootloader dialog now keeps the Run button disabled until a valid firmware file is selected, instead of accepting an invalid path and then showing an error (a4b8958ec).

  • The serial console grays out prior output and starts a fresh block whenever a Python Traceback (most recent call last): appears, so each new error stands out from previous run output (e11561f10).

  • Polished Mac menu behavior so the OpenMV Cam pinout and About entries appear under the application menu correctly, removed the unused Close Window (Ctrl+Meta+W) shortcut and the Window-menu window-list action, and set a minimum width on the FPS status label (sized to FPS: 000.000) so the FPS readout no longer jitters (8b5ebadbb).

  • Minor UI label cleanups: the save action now reads “Save open script to OpenMV Cam” and the About entry drops the trailing ellipsis on Mac (84e575c46).

Bug fixes

  • Fixed SD-card auto-detection so the “set port path” feature checks the correct mount root per OS (/Volumes on Mac, /media on Linux) and matches FAT/MSDOS filesystem types case-insensitively (72d2017d7, 34e1dc181).

Platform and tool support

  • Qt Creator base: 4.0.2.

  • OpenMV Cam M4 (OMV2) bundled firmware: updated to 1.9.0.

  • USB/serial transport reworked so each command is written in a single flush with optional per-command start/end delays (SET_START_END_DELAY), fixing serial communication reliability across Windows, Mac, and Linux. An interim per-command packetizing approach (PACKET_LEN) was introduced and then replaced before release (bd70d60fc, 89464818f, 8b5ebadbb).

  • Windows driver installers reworked to handle 64-bit (WOW64) systems and quote paths, making OpenMV/pybcdc INF driver installation reliable; new openmv.cmd/pybcdc.cmd install scripts were added and the bundled .inf/.cat driver files were rebuilt (d1c2e49f5, e0762a78e, ac144fbe4).

  • Linux desktop integration now installs the OpenMV application icon across all icon sizes instead of the generic Qt Creator logo (72d2017d7).

Breaking changes

None. v1.2.0 is fully compatible with existing scripts and projects.