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.