Fugio Friday: 23rd February 2018

Happy Fugio Friday!

I’m currently in Belfast having just given a talk for the Northern Ireland Science Festival.

Check out this cool patch that uses your webcam to create two areas on the screen that act like buttons, which you can use to trigger off whatever you like!  Yes, I know my hand is blue – I’m working on that…  It’s available under the Video Capture examples in the File menu.

The latest development builds are available for download with new command line options for controlling the loading of plugins.

You can install the snap build using the following:

snap install --edge fugio --devmode

  • NEW: Command Line Options (see below for examples)
  • NEW: Experimental Linux snap builds for i386, x64, and armhf
  • NEW: Core/ProcessClick node
  • NEW: Two Video Buttons and Multiple AND examples
  • UPDATE: OpenCV/CountNonZero accepts a Region Of Interest (ROI)
  • FIXED: Kinect wasn’t working properly after image changes

Command Line Options

The new command line options for Fugio allow you to enable or disable plugin loading, set the OpenGL backed, set the language, and define variables for plugins.

The path to the Fugio or FugioShow executable is different on each platform:

Windows:

C:\Program Files\Fugio\bin\Fugio.exe

macOS:

/Applications/Fugio/Fugio.app/Contents/MacOS/Fugio

Linux:

which fugio

Replace [fugio] in the examples below with the path to the Fugio or FugioShow application on your platform.

Show the command line options:

[fugio] -h

Only load the core and math plugins:

[fugio] --enable-plugin fugio-core --enable-plugin fugio-math

Don’t load the PortAudio plugin:

[fugio] --disable-plugin fugio-portaudio

Run Fugio in German:

[fugio] --locale de

Run Fugio in Spanish:

[fugio] -l es

Load a patch:

[fugio] path/to/your/patch.fug

You can load more than one patch by listing them all on the command line.

Have a good weekend!

Fugio Friday: 16th February 2018

Happy Fugio Friday!

I made the mysterious image at the top of this post using Fugio to process some footage I shot when recently in Venice.  I’m currently working on a series of these “algorithmic photographs” for an upcoming exhibition (plus talks and workshops!) at Texas A&M university in a few weeks.  You can see the latest images on my Instagram feed.

This week we have an updated 3.0.0 development release for all platforms that has a few key changes:

  • NEW: Hovering your mouse cursor over nodes in the insert node dialog will show you their description (if they have one)
  • NEW: EasyShader2D supports multiple texture render targets
  • UPDATE: VariantPin now has tooltips for QPoint and QSize
  • UPDATE: OpenGL examples use EasyShader2D where possible
  • UPDATE: Implemented more portable OpenGL VAO support
  • FIXED: FilenamePin wasn’t saving default value paths correctly
  • FIXED: GetSize wasn’t setting its variant count properly
  • FIXED: Stepping through media using Media Processor, or streaming media should work much better now
  • FIXED: There were missing dependencies on the Raspberry Pi build (thanks Winfred!)

Have a good weekend!

Fugio Friday: 9th February 2018

Happy Fugio Friday!

Despite having been away in Venice for most of the week for a rare holiday, we have a new Fugio development update for you to download.

There is still some work to do before a final release of 3.0.0 but we’re getting closer…

NEW

  • New nodes for chopping up strings: Left, Right, Mid, Chop
  • New node for finding text in a string: Contains
  • New boolean logic node: Boolean Latch
  • New control node: Block Updates
  • New options on initial patch prompt

FIXED

  • All translations now working again
  • Fixed wrong libswresample-ffmpeg2 dependency
  • Examples and snippets weren’t being found
  • WebSocket was disabled

Have a good weekend!

Fugio Friday: v3.0.0 dev for Win 32/64, Mac, Linux, RPi

Happy Fugio Friday!

We have a binary release for Linux!

Following on from last week, I’ve been putting the finishing touches to my new Jenkins based build system for Fugio.

From now on you’ll be able to download the latest development build for Windows 32 and 64 bit, macOS, Linux, and Raspberry Pi.

Once the builds are deemed stable, they will be moved to the stable download section and work will begin on the next release.

Apart from being able to keep 5 different build platforms up to date, it means that new features and bug fixes will be available sooner.

On GitHub, the new release branch will now start at the beginning of the release cycle, instead of the end.  The develop branch will be merged with the release branch once new code is ready to be tested.

Please test the new builds and let me know if there are any problems.  Every system has their own complex way of building and distributing software that I’ve had to learn and grapple with.  This release is a whole new implementation across the board so there may be a few problems.

Finally, the whole build system is now cmake based rather than using qmake, which is the culmination of weeks of work.

Have a good weekend!

If you want to support Fugio development then please consider joining my Patreon page to help fund future work.

Fugio Friday: Happy New Year 2018!

Hey, happy new year!

So I’ve been taking a little break from the Fugio Friday as I’m flat out working on the final run up to a new permanent art installation in London that is using… Fugio, of course!

I’m also working on some big changes for the first release of 2018:

For the first time in Fugio’s history, I’m doing some changes that will almost certainly break a few patches.  The main issue I’ve had is how Fugio deals differently with pins that have a single value (say a 2D Point), and a pin that has multiple values (like an array).  I want to simplify this interface, which will enable more succinct patches, faster processing, and easier Lua code.  The example screenshot here shows the Lua script processing an array of 2D points using the new interface.

As Fugio is able to work on more platforms, I’ve finally ventured into the world of automated builds.  I’m now running Jenkins to build Win32, Win64, macOS, Raspberry Pi, and now a Linux binary distribution:

These are all being build off the feature/cmake branch, which will become the default build method in 2018.

I’ve still got a little way to go before these releases will be ready for you to download, but I’m working on it!  Don’t forget you can support the ongoing work by signing up for my Fugio Patreon page!

That’s the news so far for 2018.  Hope it’s treating you well.

Have a great weekend.

Fugio Friday: Raspberry Pi release

Happy Fugio Friday!

I’m delighted to announce the first binary release of Fugio for Raspberry Pi (running Raspbian Stretch – as well as updated Windows and macOS builds).

No longer do you need to worry about compiling or cross compiling from source.  You can even install it via apt-get to handle all the dependencies automatically.

Download Fugio v2.14.0 for Windows and macOS (source code)

Installing Fugio on Raspberry Pi

Open a Terminal window.

If you’re installing Fugio for the first time on your Pi, you need to add my public key so you know the files are signed by me.

sudo apt install dirmngr

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys BC9654E46D3A81C4

Next, you need to add the Fugio source to your system:

nano /etc/apt/sources.list

At the end of the file, add the following line:

deb https://www.bigfug.com/releases/ stretch main rpi

Save the file (Ctrl+X).  Now you can update your sources:

sudo apt update

And you’re good to go…

sudo install fugio

This is the first time I’ve done a binary release for Raspberry Pi, so please let me know if you run into any problems in the comments below.

Check out the new GPIO node if you want to access the Raspberry Pi’s pins.  I’m doing some work with this at the moment for controlling RGB LED’s and it’s working for simple I/O.

Currently it’s not possible to utilise the accelerated video decoding on the Pi as there are some incompatibilities that I still have to resolve, so don’t expect the video decoding to work at full speed.

What else is new?

Obviously this wasn’t just a case of compiling the source code on a Raspberry Pi.  I had to do a lot of work on the OpenGL side to support OpenGL ES, allowing accelerated graphics.

To simplify using OpenGL shaders on all platforms, I’ve added a new node called “Easy Shader 2D”, which avoids having to add geometry and other OpenGL support nodes.  See the new examples.

You’ll also notice a big change when you start Fugio up – we have a wonderful new logo that was designed by Eleanor Hyland-Stanbrook.

There’s a new plugin: NDI for sending and receiving video over a network (the 1,000th commit on GitHub).

There’s some new nodes for working with arrays of bits like IntToBits, AndBits, XorBits, etc.  If you’re interested in modelling logic systems, these will save you lots of nodes!

There’s a StringSplit, Min and Max, Cosine, JoinPoint, and OpenGL ArrayToTexture…

This release also has the first build of FugioShow which is a small application for running the patches you’ve designed with Fugio without the editor.

Wow, that was a lot of new stuff!  You’ll have noticed that there hasn’t been a Fugio Friday for a while.  This was mainly because I’m super busy working on my art commission for the Francis Crick Institute, and also the large amount of changes needed to be made to the OpenGL side to support the Pi.

Have a great weekend!

NEW

  • New logo!
  • OpenGL ES support
  • NDI plugin added
  • FugioShow
  • OpenGL EasyShader2D, ArrayToTextureBuffer node
  • Point and Line support with pin, Lua class
  • OpenCV Hough Lines and Simple Blob Detector nodes
  • IntToBits, Multiplexor, AndBits, BitsToPins, FlipFlop, NandBits, NorBits, OrBits, XorBits, Min, Max, CosineDegrees nodes added to Math plugin
  • SplitList, StringSplit, JoinPoint nodes
  • GPIO Raspberry Pi node
  • Can run Fugio with –opengl, –gles, or –glsw for OpenGL desktop, ES, and software renderer
  • Added OpenGL Barrel Distortion example
  • Added Geometry plugin with PolygonNode (early stage)

UPDATED

  • Iterations added to OpenCV Erode/Dilate
  • Nodes that take a filename will pop up a file dialog when you ‘Edit Default’ so you don’t need a FilenameNode
  • Math Add, Divide, Multiply, and Subtract nodes work on a wider range of input data types
  • Variant pins show useful data when you hover the mouse over them
  • Added lots of new data types to ArrayPin

FIXED

  • Code is Qt 5.7 compatible
  • Fixes to TextureMonitor

 

Fugio Friday: The Rabbit Hole

You may have noticed a slight break down in the regularity of these posts of late, which is due to too much work rather than a lack of it!

Those of you following Fugio’s progress will know that I’m working hard on supporting the Raspberry Pi as a primary platform.

Recently I got very excited due to the release of Raspbian Stretch, with it’s new experimental OpenGL driver that allows Fugio (and many other applications) to run accelerated graphics within the desktop windowed environment, which is how things work on Windows, Mac, and Linux.  This is what I was showing off at Ars Electronica a few weeks back.

The next stage was to add the code so Fugio could access the Raspberry Pi’s amazing media processing hardware for decoding and encoding H264 HD video, audio, and other tricks.  This is where things started to get tricky…

I’ve spent the past couple of weeks learning about how the new RPi driver, called VC4, plays with the existing systems, specifically the OpenMAX API’s for video decoding.  On the face of it, everything looked like it should play well together.

I won’t bore you by describing the interminable range of combinations I’ve tried, usually resulting in hour long compilations of Qt with different variations of OpenGL, but there were a lot!

Turns out that the new VC4 driver is incompatible with OpenMAX, and to further complicate things, the accelerated EGL/GLES libraries are now renamed to libbrcmEGL.so and libbrcmGLESv2.so, with the standard libEGL/libGLESv2 libraries being Mesa implementations with software rendering, so just disabling the VC4 driver doesn’t wholly fix the problem as Qt seems a bit hard coded to look for libEGL/libGLESv2.

So, now I’m a left a little confused as to what happens with OpenMAX under VC4.  Will it be replaced by something else or will it be made compatible?  If you know, please enlighten me 🙂

The current status for Fugio is that it’s working great under VC4, and is probably the best and easiest entry for users to get it running on a Pi.  While the OpenGL stuff works great, I can’t (yet) support accelerated media processing.  Therefore, I plan to do release Fugio on the Pi like this for now, which I plan to do in the next couple of weeks.

For my own projects where I need the acceleration, I’m planning to drop back to Raspbian Jessie and use the old drivers that are compatible with OpenMAX.

Anyway, that’s where we’re at.  I’m off to Birmingham, Dublin, and Paris next week…

PS: do please consider giving a bit of regular funding to help Fugio along via Patreon.  It really helps keep up the enthusiasm levels for working on open source software when hitting big roadblocks like this one.  Even 1$ a month is really appreciated, thanks!

Fugio Friday: Ars Electronia Report

Happy Fugio Friday!

And for those of you who signed up to the mailing list at Ars Electronica: welcome!

For those who weren’t in Linz, we were showing off the latest Fugio build running various patches, including a native OpenGL ES on a Raspberry Pi 3.  There were also Fugio badges, stickers, and lots of interesting conversations!

 

There was a great deal of interest in the Raspberry Pi build, and several people suggested how it could be an excellent platform for educational programs, and cost effective too!

We also had several conversations on the topic of long term preservation of digital art, which is something I’ve built into the heart of Fugio since day one.

It was great to introduce people to Fugio in person and see their reactions and get their impressions of the software through fresh eyes.  It’s given me some good ideas for how I want to proceed in the future with new tutorials and features.

For now, I’m focussing on native audio and video playback on the Raspberry Pi as my next major task.  Will keep you posted…

As ever, please send me your ideas, feedback, and news of any Fugio projects that you’re working on, and have a great weekend!

Fugio Friday: Ars Electronica

Happy Fugio Friday!

It’s great to be back in Linz for Ars Electronica 2017.  Have already caught up with many friends from around the world and seen some lovely works, though the event is so huge that there is still so much to be seen.

In preparation for the Mini Maker Faire in POSTCITY on Sunday I have got Fugio badges and stickers ready to give away, so if you’re at Ars Electronica, do stop by and see Fugio in action.

My laptop is now 500% better with a shiny new Fugio sticker on it…

Will post up pictures from the event next week.

Have a great weekend!