This week, I installed PyCharm and attempted to install all the necessary packages to it (nimpy and cv2). I tried to learn how to run a file remotely through the interpreter and how to organize my files in one location.

Currently I’m having trouble setting up my project in PyCharm (it won’t detect the necessary modules and I’ve been trying to figure out how to fix that)

EDIT: After spending some hours trying to figure out the issue, I found out that I had Python 2.7 installed from a while ago and that was getting mixed up with the 3.6 that I had installed recently, so that may have been causing PyCharm to not recognize the packages. I had the wrong interpreter selected in the IDE settings, so selecting the correct one fixed the issue!

In addition to that, I tested out cv2’s live video/webcam functionality in PyCharm and started working on face/eye/blob detection. I used the code from http://docs.opencv.org/3.0-beta/doc/py_tutorials/py_gui/py_video_display/py_video_display.html
and running the program correctly opened the laptop’s webcam (how cool) but I couldn’t get the window to close properly (it would keep reopening).

Now that I actually have some foundation and idea of what’s going on, the plan for next week is what the initial plan was for this week – to actually start playing with blob and face detection from pictures and live webcam.

This week, I had to make some adjustments to my goals for multiple reasons – first being that this was another one of my pretty heavy workload weeks with regards to classes. This shouldn’t be an issue from now on as I have dropped a class to be able to devote more time to this project (and because of other issues).

Secondly, after doing some exploring with OpenCV and Python, it quickly become apparent to me that because of my minimal exposure to the language, I had some trouble understanding syntax and concepts so I took a step back and spent some time refreshing myself on the language to try to get a better foundation in order to be better prepared for the later stages. I did this through some lessons on CodeAcademy and skimming through some the Python Tutorials playlist by Youtuber thenewboston: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6gx4Cwl9DGAcbMi1sH6oAMk4JHw91mC_

I highly recommend this channel for learning new technologies, it is my go-to.

Another issue I ran into and am currently trying to figure out is the type of coding environment I should use. I am unsure of whether to code directly in the Python interpreter and run it through that, or whether I should download an editor like Komodo to organize the file better in the case that there would be many, many lines of code involved. I am leaning towards either that or SublimeText, and teaching myself how to run these files through the command line. (I am already used to Eclipse and IntelliJ so I think it would be a nice transition to a Python editor rather than trying to code directly in the command line). A useful resource I found to get myself familiar with these basics of Python programming is the following: https://opentechschool.github.io/python-beginners/en/getting_started.html

Finally, speaking of the command line, I thought it might be a good idea to set up a Github repository for the project to have it all in one place and periodically update my code. That will be located at the following: https://github.com/saadbadger/IPD-Detection

This will be my first of many weekly posts regarding my progress on the semester project I was assigned for independent study – IPD detection.

Coming into the project I have minimal programming experience with Python and VR but have done more extensive work with Java and C, so I am excited for what this semester holds and to learn many things along the way.

For this first week I had the goal of setting up Python and OpenCV and having it open and show an image. I was hoping to get beyond that but with a very busy week that wasn’t possible, unfortunately. (I embarrassingly spent a few hours dealing with pip and python installation issues and figuring out the command line)

Attached are screenshot(s) of what I was able to accomplish so far:
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For next week I plan to take this further and try and have OpenCV to talk to the laptop’s webcam, and also test functionality with videos. From there I could proceed to playing with the library’s blob detection capabilities.