I'm developing two areas: a capture program for use with machine vision cameras (currently with Firewire 1394a/b interface, but maybe GigE in the future) and a fully adjustable flash lighting system using high brightness LEDs.

The capture system is my custom application which uses an ActiveX control ActiveDcam from A&B Software for the camera interface. The control provides the IEE1394 (Firewire) interface driver, image debayer and display, capture to disk and access to the many camera controls and image data.

Main features I've developed are a user friendly control interface, live histogram while capturing and second monitor option with real time image processing for previewing negative film for example. Each monitor has selectable magnification and there is a ROI setting for the histogram data. Also provided is automatic internal/external trigger selection between preview and capture modes, etc.

The first version is fully functional as a stand alone application for most Firewire machine vision cameras. Here are some screenshots from this version:

An overlay box can be called up for selecting the ROI window for the histogram. The box can be sized and moved by the mouse.

The control system for the LEDs is a newer application, being built on the .NET framework for Windows.
It is the basis for the final application which will include the capture functionality also. The next stage of the project is to combine the applications into one. This will allow new features such as automatic white balance at the start of scenes (see here: Auto White Balance for a screen grab of my test application in action) and automatic stopping of the capture and projector if a new scene starts which needs White Balance resetting.

Here's what the hardware control panel for the LEDs looks like:

When a hardware control is operated, the corresponding software control rotates as if it were being operated by the mouse.

Here's a glimpse of some of the histogram display options for the new version. These are shown in Keep On Top mode, which allows the histogram window to sit over other windows to save screen space: