v1.4.0

v1.4.0 introduces two new Machine Vision tools – the Threshold Editor and the Keypoints Editor – alongside a substantial reorganization of the bundled example scripts and bundled OpenMV firmware 2.1.0. It remains on the Qt Creator 4.0.2 base. This release changes several keyboard shortcuts and renames or removes some example scripts; see Breaking changes.

Highlights

  • Threshold Editor added under Tools > Machine Vision: loads an image from the frame buffer or a file, shows a live binary preview with adjustable Grayscale or LAB min/max sliders plus invert, and outputs the threshold tuple for use in scripts.

  • Keypoints Editor added under Tools > Machine Vision: visually displays ORB/LBP keypoints over the source image and lets you select and delete outlier keypoints, switch octaves, and edit or merge keypoint files.

  • Reorganized examples: new Board-Control Arduino I2C/SPI slave examples, a new ORB keypoints example, QR-code lens-correction examples, and a rewritten Color-Tracking suite.

  • Bundled OpenMV firmware updated to 2.1.0, with the STM32F7 board target changed from OMV7 to OMV3.

  • Keyboard shortcuts added: Ctrl+E for Connect/Disconnect and Ctrl+R for Stop (moved from Ctrl+T).

New features

  • Threshold Editor (Tools > Machine Vision) loads an image from the frame buffer or a file and shows a live binary preview with adjustable Grayscale or LAB min/max sliders plus invert, outputting the threshold tuple for use in scripts (fd100a5c3).

  • Keypoints Editor (Tools > Machine Vision) visually displays ORB/LBP keypoints over the source image, lets you select and delete outlier keypoints with the mouse and Delete key, switch octaves via a slider, and edit or merge keypoint files (4549227fc, f6ee10595, 0e046f51a).

  • After a firmware-up-to-date check, the IDE now offers to reset the OpenMV Cam to the bundled release firmware, optionally erasing the internal filesystem (e7803d33c).

  • Example scripts reorganized: new Board-Control Arduino I2C/SPI slave examples, a new ORB keypoints example (keypoints.py/keypoints_save.py) replacing freak.py, QR-code lens-correction/zoom examples, and a rewritten Color-Tracking suite (automatic grayscale/RGB565 color tracking, IR-beacon tracking, single/multi color blob and color-code tracking, image histogram/statistics info, line following) (e7803d33c).

Other changes and improvements

  • The Keypoints Editor now backs up the original keypoint and image files (.bak) before overwriting them on save (fd100a5c3).

  • Connect and Disconnect are now bound to Ctrl+E, and Stop (halt script) moved from Ctrl+T to Ctrl+R (e7803d33c).

  • IDE network endpoints were repointed to the new openmv.io hosts: forums to forums.openmv.io and the download page to openmv.io/pages/download (e7803d33c), and the version-check, resources-version, and resources-zip downloads to upload.openmv.io (e899abcca).

Bug fixes

  • Firmware flashing via DFU (DfuSeCommand on Windows, pydfu on other platforms) now retries up to 10 times instead of failing on the first attempt, making bootloader/DFU updates more reliable (e7803d33c).

  • Saving an untitled/new script now correctly opens Save As, and after saving the editor’s display name is cleared so the title no longer keeps the temporary _$ placeholder name (e7803d33c).

  • Added a sanity check that rejects implausible firmware version numbers (outside 0..100) and reconnects instead of proceeding (2320ab299).

  • Fixed the drive-association prompt so that silent reconnects automatically pick the first drive instead of incorrectly suppressing the selection (4fda9a7d6, e7803d33c).

  • Fixed rendering of binary (1bpp) frame-buffer images by aligning each row to 32 bits instead of 8 bits, so binary images streamed from the OpenMV Cam display correctly instead of with garbled/misaligned rows (e7803d33c).

Platform and tool support

  • Qt Creator base: 4.0.2.

  • Bundled OpenMV firmware: updated from 2.0.0 to 2.1.0 (f6ee10595).

  • STM32F7 board target: changed from OMV7 (STM32F769) to OMV3 (STM32F765/512), with new bootloader/firmware binaries for both OMV2 and OMV3 (f6ee10595).

  • Linux udev rules: the OpenMV Cam and DFU device rules now set MTP_NO_PROBE=1 to stop the desktop from probing the device as an MTP device (e7803d33c).

Breaking changes

User-visible workflow changes between v1.3.x and v1.4.0:

  • Keyboard shortcuts changed: Stop (halt script) moved from Ctrl+T to Ctrl+R, and Connect/Disconnect is now bound to Ctrl+E.

  • Example scripts renamed/removed: several Color-Tracking examples were renamed or removed (e.g. blob_detection.py, marker_tracking.py), and the Feature-Detection freak.py example was removed and replaced by keypoints.py.