Easy way to grab image from Axis IP Camera

I was supposed to develop a program in OpenCV which can capture image from Axis 207 IP Camera. So I was searching in google to find the normal way to capure image from Axis IP Camera. I found some solutions. Some people told that they used cvCreateFileCapture() or some other use Axis Media Controller SDK. I was trying to use those. Using cvCreateFileCapture() I got blank image and using Axis Media Controller SDK I got some error. But I was in hurry to solve this problem. Then I got an idea. You know that Axis IP camera has it's own web sever. In every 1 second it creates 20 image in it's web server. Then I was trying with "wget" command. But it didn't work. One my friend (Faruk Ahmed) remembered me a perl command which was normally used for downloading files. The perl command is "lwp-download". So I installed Perl in my System.

So from now you don't need to install any other driver to capture image from Axis IP Camera in any kind of system (Windows, Unix/Linux, Mac). Just install Perl and connect your camera. :-)

Here is a very simple OpenCV program to capture image from Axis IP Camera, convert it to grayscale and binary image in every 5 second.

/*
This simple program is written by Khandakar Mujahidul Islam.
Using this program someone can grab image from Axis IP Camera.
I used Axis 207 IP Camera.
*/

#include "stdio.h"
#include "tchar.h"

#include "cv.h"
#include "cxcore.h"
#include "highgui.h"


// A Simple Camera Capture Framework
int main() {

int time = 500;

for(int t=0;t
{
/*Removing Existing Image. "del" in Windows and "rm -f" in Linux*/
system("del image.jpg grayscale.jpg binary.jpg");

/*
Downloading Image from Axix Camera Image Server.
Camera IP = 169.254.195.48
*/
system("lwp-download http://169.254.195.48/jpg/image.jpg");

/*Loading Original Image*/
IplImage *originalImage  = cvLoadImage("image.jpg",-1);

/*Creating Blank 640x480 image; 8 means 8 bit unsigned image*/
IplImage * grayScaleImage = cvCreateImage(cvSize(640,480),8,1);
IplImage * binaryImage = cvCreateImage(cvSize(640,480),8,1);

/*
Give a name to Image Window.
Move the image window.
Show Image.
*/
cvNamedWindow("Original", 1);
cvMoveWindow("Original", 0,0);
cvShowImage("Original", originalImage);


/*
Creating Gray Scale Image.
Save the Image.
Give a name to Image Window.
Move the image window.
Show Image.
*/
cvCvtColor(originalImage, grayScaleImage, CV_BGR2GRAY);
cvSaveImage("grayscale.jpg",grayScaleImage);
cvNamedWindow("GrayScale", 1);
cvMoveWindow("GrayScale", 550,400);
cvShowImage("GrayScale", grayScaleImage);

/*
This is the Canny Edge Detector function
*/
/*
cvCanny(grayScaleImage, edgeImage, 0.5, 0.5, 3);
*/

/*
Creating Binary Image.
Save the Image.
Give a name to Image Window.
Move the image window.
Show Image.
*/
cvThreshold(grayScaleImage, binaryImage, 130, 255, CV_THRESH_BINARY);    
cvSaveImage("binary.jpg",binaryImage);
cvNamedWindow("Binary", 1);
cvMoveWindow("Binary", 650,0);
cvShowImage("Binary", binaryImage);

/*
Wait for 5 Sec (1 sec = 1000 mili sec)
*/
cvWaitKey(5000);

/*
Closing the Image Window
*/
cvDestroyWindow("Original");
cvDestroyWindow("GrayScale");
cvDestroyWindow("Binary");

/*
Releasing Image from Memory
*/
cvReleaseImage(&originalImage);
cvReleaseImage(&grayScaleImage);
cvReleaseImage(&binaryImage);
}

return 0;
}