OpenCV for Secret Agents

by Joseph Howse

Use OpenCV in six secret projects to augment your home, car, phone, eyesight, and any photo or drawingAbout This BookBuild OpenCV apps for the desktop, the Raspberry Pi, Android, and the Unity game engineLearn real-time techniques that can be used to classify images, detecting and recognizing any person or animal, and studying motion and distance with superhuman precisionDesign hands-free interfaces that are practical in home automation, in cars, and in discrete surveillanceWho This Book Is ForThis book is for programmers who want to expand their skills by building fun, smart, and useful systems with OpenCV. The projects are ideal in helping you to think creatively about the uses of computer vision, natural user interfaces, and ubiquitous computers (in your home, car, and hand).

What You Will LearnInstall OpenCV, a Python development environment, and an Android development environment on Windows, Mac, or Linux and install a Unity development environment on Windows or MacGet to grips with motion detection and gesture recognition as a means of controlling a guessing game on a smartphoneDetect car headlights, estimate distances to them, and provide feedback to the driverSpot and recognize human faces and cat faces as a means of controlling an alarmAmplify motion in real-time video so that a person's heartbeat and breathing become clearly visibleDraw a ball-in-a-maze puzzle on paper and see it come to life as a physics simulation on a smartphoneIntegrate OpenCV with other libraries, as well as popular frameworks for GUI apps and gamesIn DetailOpenCV is a grand collection of image processing functions and computer vision algorithms. It is open source, it supports many programming languages and platforms, and it is fast enough for many real-time applications. What a lot of gadgets we can build with such a handy library!

Taking inspiration from the world of James Bond, this book adds a spark of adventure and computer vision to your daily routine. Protect your home and car with intelligent camera systems that analyze people, cats, and obstacles. Let your search engine praise or criticize the images that it finds. Hear a voice from your phone that responds to your body language. Attune yourself to another person's rhythm by glancing at a display that magnifies a heartbeat or a breath. Learn OpenCV and see your world as never before.

475 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 28, 2015

About the author

Joseph Howse writes fiction, as well as technical books on computer programming and image analysis. He lives in a Nova Scotian fishing village, where he chats with his cats and nurtures an orchard of hardy fruit trees. His debut novel, The Girl in the Water, has won the 2023 Independent Press Award for Literary Fiction, the 2023 IAN Awards for Outstanding Multicultural Fiction, and the 2023 IPPY Awards Bronze Medal for Best Regional Ebook (Fiction). He is currently working on a sequel.

Reviews

[Semen Frish · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most practical books for programmers I've ever read :)

[Tom Daley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great recipe book.