Programmatic access to Brother ADS-1000W - python

I've got a Brother ADS-1000W receipt scanner and using the ControlCenter4 software it works great. However I would like to be able automate the scanning process and I can't find any pointers/clues on where to get access to the ADS-1000W specific features. With the ControlCenter4 software, I can have the scanner deskew images. It also scans to an arbitrary length and width (matching the scanned receipt). I'm assuming this is being handled by the scanner, but it may be happening in the ControlCenter4 software. These features specifically don't seem to be accessible in the TWAIN interface. I tried using TWAINCommander 3 and it doesn't show the deskew and arbitrary size features in the TWAIN interface.
I've got both Linux and Windows machines available and I'm cool with a commandline solution or an SDK that I have to write software to implement. If it's an SDK, I prefer Python.
I know this is somewhat open-ended, but hoping someone can point in a direction for further research.

Just in case anyone else stumbles across this question: The ADS-1000W supports scanning to FTP. If PDF is selected, then the scanner supports the de-skew option, so I installed vsftpd on my linux box and used Python to process the files as their uploaded.

Related

Capture image from a Mightex usb camera with opencv-python

I am trying to capture images from a Mightex cmos usb camera (SCE-B013-U) with Python 3.6.5 and opencv-python 3.4.3.18. The software came along confirms the camera works fine. But, cv2.VideoCapture(0).isOpened() is false. I am sure I am missing something, but I do not know what. Please help. Thanks a lot in advance.
For testing I have 1 camera installed on my setup that I know is opencv compatible with the command below:
print(cv2.VideoCapture(0).isOpened())
returns True for me, but if I unplug the camera, it returns False. False can imply that there is no camera available....
If the other answer (above) yields no result, perhaps the installed driver may not be compatible with opencv?
From the product description:
In addition, a user-friendly GUI based application software and an SDK
are provided for custom software development. A USB command set
protocol is also provided for non-Windows based application
Cannot help but to think that this company may be following a different standard to the one opencv typically uses. For example, many USB3Vision cameras will not work out of the box in the way you are attempting and require additional programming to return a NumPy style array image.
Additional support for my thinking is in the "EXAMPLE OF GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE"
Many of the options I've seen in the GeniCam standard (USB3Vision).
Camera Mode (Continuous / Trigger), Exposure Control, Autoexposure Enable, etc
This is not to say that the camera is definitely is or is not one or the other, but the symptoms suggest the camera is not compliant to run out of the box using opencv in the way you want to.
You could try this 3rd party SDK instead to help verify.
I have no affiliation with them, but the ability to use their program for a (free) trial is very useful for helping to troubleshoot this issue.
Best of luck with getting your camera to work.
Maybe this will help, the official documentation states:
Sometimes, cap may not have initialized the capture. In that case,
this code shows error. You can check whether it is initialized or not
by the method cap.isOpened(). If it is True, OK. Otherwise open it
using cap.open().

How do I connect/disconnect/configure a wireless network in python?

I'm looking to see if there is a way to connect or disconnect to a wireless network in python, preferably a way that would work for both public and secured networks if I supplied the password. If I can configure the options about wireless, that would be an added bonus (ex. see all networks in range, see information about networks in range (like encryption type)). I run a windows computer, so I see many answers to this question in Linux, or other operating systems, but none in windows. Thanks in advance.
You'll probably have to use one of the DLLs in windows for that. Using ctypes you can get access to the win32 API from Python.
It looks like the functions from wlanapi.dll, starting with WlanOpenHandle and WlanEnumInterfaces might do what you want.
Edit: For example code, see the accepted answer to this.

Using python to control a phone with bluetooth

I would like to know if there are any API's for python to programmatically control a phone, like starting and ending calls, but also to record conversations.
I would also like to use the Headphones and Mic of the computer to talk over the phone.
Any info would be great, I tried googling for something, but nothing useful came up.
Be careful when using PyBluez! The results will actually depend on the BT-USB dongle you are using. Depending on the hardware(the BT chip in there), PyBluez will use one or another BT stack - for example there was one from WIDCOMM. Results will vary, as PyBluez is actually wrapping around those stacks - all of which are far from complete.
So, when you have a working project, be sure to know what actual BT stack you were using :)
For Python audio stuff, you could try this.
PyBluez is an effort to create python wrappers around system Bluetooth resources to allow Python developers to easily and quickly create Bluetooth applications.
Unfortunately I've not found a page dedicated to its features, but it could be a good starting point, whether everything you need is in its feature set, or if you could build your application upon it by extending it.
http://code.google.com/p/pybluez/

scripting fruityloops or propellerheads reason from VB or Python?

I have both Fruityloops and Propellerheads Reason software synths on my Windows PC.
Any way I can get at and script these from either Visual Basic or Python? Or at least send Midi messages to the synths from code?
Update : attempts to use something like a "midi-mapper" (thanks for link MusiGenesis) don't seem to work. I don't think Reason or FL Studio act like standard GM Midi synths.
Update 2 : If you're interested in this question, check out this too.
Both applications support MIDI. It's just that they don't see each other.
In order to send messages via MIDI between applications, you need to install a virtual midi port.
There are several freely available, but this one works: http://www.midiox.com/zip/MidiYokeSetup.msi
You'll get a virtual MIDI output port that you can write to as if it's a normal MIDI device. In Fruity Loops or Rebirth you choose that port as the input. That's all you need to do to connect the programs.
It'll work like this:
Your Application --> Virtual MIDI Port --> FruityLoops
Note: This answer doesn't exactly answer the question you asked but it might achieve the result you want :)
You can author a VST plugin in Java using jVSTWrapper (http://jvstwrapper.sourceforge.net/). If you really wanted to use Python you could use Jython to interface to java and do it that way. Alternatively you could just write the plugin in Java or another scripting language for the JVM like Groovy.
I think both FL Studio and Reason can be configured as the default MIDI playback device. To send MIDI messages to either from VB.NET, you'll need to PInvoke the midiOutOpen, midiOutShortMsg and midiOutClose API calls. Here's a link to code samples:
http://www.answers.com/topic/midioutopen
They're for VB6, but they should be easy to translate to VB.NET.
I know FL Studio can be "driven" from a plugin authored for FL (or a VSTx plugin), but I think these are always written in C or C++.
Edit: I just learned that Windows Vista dropped the MIDI Mapper (which would have made setting up FL or Reason as the default MIDI device simple). Amazing. Here is a link I found with an alternative solution:
http://akkordwechsel.de/15-windows-vista-und-der-midi-mapper/
I just tried it out (it's just a *.CPL file that you double-click to run) and it appears to work (although the GM Synth is the only option available on my laptop, so I'm not sure if it will pick up FL or Reason as choices).
What you need is a VST MIDI scripter / scripting plugin to create a logic of MIDI events that can be sent to any MIDI channel. You would need to set a MIDI channel in FL for the VST instrument/effect you need to tweak its values. Google for it there are some plugins around and please share them back here if you find anything useful :)
You could write a Rewire host. Though, you will have to get a license (the license is free, but your application must be proprietary, so no open source).
Alternatively, you could interface through MIDI messages.
Finally, you could implement a dummy audio device which would route the audio to/from wherever you want or process it in some way.
I imagine all of these would be reasonably difficult. MIDI is probably the easiest of the three (I have no idea how easy or hard the Rewire protocol is to use).
When it comes to Reason, you can do with it to much because of it's closed architecture - you can use VST plugins (or any other type like DirectX ones) - your only option is to use MIDI.
Regarding Fruity Loops, you could write a VST plugin that can take an input from a scripting language (VB, Python or whatever) but in order to write such thing you would have to use Delphi or C++.
Alternatively, you can check out MAX made by Cycling74 - it's something like a IDE for music ;-) - and I'm pretty sure you can use Python with it.
There's an opensource music workstation, called Frinika, and you can script that in Javascript. (Insert / delete notes , change midi effects like pitch wheel etc.) It can import / export regular midi files, so it will work with Fruity loops or whatever else you have.
// Insert New
song.newLane("MyMidiLane", type("Midi"));
lane = song.getLane("MyMidiLane");
part = lane.newPart( time("10.0:000"), time("4.0:000") );
part.insertNote(note("c#3"), time("11.2:000"), time("2:0"), 120 );
part.insertNote(note("f3"), time("11.3:000"), time("1:0"), 100 );
part.insertNote(note("g#3"), time("11.3:000"), time("1:0"), 100 );
part.insertNote(note("b3"), time("11.3:000"), time("0:64"), 100 );
part.removeNote(note("f3"), time("11.3:000"));
part = song.newLane("MyTextLane",
type("Text")).newPart(time("24.0:000"), time("10.0:000"));
part.text = "This is the test text to be inserted.";
part.lane.parts[0].remove(); // remove initially inserted text-part
Another example for reading/changing notes:
lane = song.getLane("MyMidiLane");
// a lane has a fixed instrument assigned
lane.parts[0].notes[0].duration=64
lane.parts[0].notes[1].duration=32
lane.parts[0].notes[1].startTick=120
// Parts are blocks of notes that you can drag around together in the Frinika GUI.
// They're like patterns in trackers.
for (i in lane.parts[0].notes){
println("i: "+i+", n: "+noteName(lane.parts[0].notes[i].note));
println("i: "+i+", dur: "+lane.parts[0].notes[i].duration);
println("i: "+i+", startT: "+lane.parts[0].notes[i].startTick);
}
http://frinika.appspot.com/
It has a Java Webstart launcher as well, so you don't even have to
install.
It used to bundle the Javadoc documentation as well, but for some
reason their latest downloads don't include that. It's a pity, because
that's where the Javascript bindings are documented. So, now you have
to browse the source or build the Javadoc yourself. (It has some built-in examples that are accessible from the scripting window, you should check them out first. My first example is from there.)
Here is the sourcefile where you'll find the Javascript docs:
frinika Javascript doc/source
But there are other options as well. You can check out mingus too, which is a Python library for music theory and midi file handling. It requires Fluidsynth, and the demo apps require GamePython too, so it's a bit more complicated to setup than Frinika.
P.S.:
Frinika has a particular bug: when dragging around neighbouring notes, some might not sound the right length. You can help that by transposing forth and back the consecutive notes (fairly fast in piano roll view), or dragging the part that contains the notes forth and back. Restarting Frinika will also help, but that's the slower way. So this bug won't affect saved files, neither midi export.

Multiple mouse pointers?

Is there a way to accept input from more than one mouse separately? I'm interested in making a multi-user application and I thought it would be great if I could have 2 or more users holding wireless mice each interacting with the app individually with a separate mouse arrow.
Is this something I should try to farm out to some other application/driver/os_magic? or is there a library I can use to accomplish this? Language isn't a HUGE deal, but C, C++, and Python are preferrable.
Thanks :)
edit:
Found this multi-pointer toolkit for linux (it's actually a multi-pointer x server):
http://wearables.unisa.edu.au/mpx/
You could try the Microsoft Windows MultiPoint Software Development Kit 1.1
or the new
Microsoft Windows MultiPoint Software Development Kit 1.5
and the main Microsoft Multipoint site
Yes. I know of at least one program that does this, KidPad. I think it's written in Java and was developed by Juan Pablo Hourcade, now at the University of Iowa. You'd have to ask him how it was implemented.
http://code.google.com/p/pymultimouse/ is a library using windows raw input, it worked in a test with 2 mice.
You could use DirectInput with C/C++ (there's probably also bindings in other languages). You use IDirectInput8::EnumDevices() (using DX8; same function, different interface in other versions of DirectX) to get a list of all attached devices. Then, you create the devices and poll them IDirectInputDevice8::Poll(). This should almost definitely work with any number of mice, keyboards, and other input devices. MSDN has really good documentation on this.
I have this vague feeling that BeOS used to let one pair a mouse and keyboard and have separate active windows and inputs. Wow... that was a long time ago. I thought that it would be very interesting for "paired" programming.
See my answer here (avoid the JNI stuff): How can I handle multiple mouse inputs in Java?

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