I am searching for a sponsor to assist me with the building of the GPL-licensed software packages Gpiv c.s. I am writing and would like to see included in Debian.
Summary ------- This software provides the analyzing of images for PIV. Software for this (research and production) technology is not included in any Linux distro. The features, quality and performances of Gpiv s.s. are very competitive compared to other existing, Open Source, free-ware and commercial software for PIV. The popularity of this technique is still increasing, but initial costs are high because of hard and software to be needed. Experienced users are often searching for alternatives of their commercial program after some time as it becomes obsolete for the analysing of the images. Therefore, it might be advantageous to include Gpiv c.s. in Debian. Description ----------- Gpiv c.s. concerns software for the so-called (Digital) Particle Image Velocimetry technique (PIV); an image recording and analyzing technology to obtain a velocity field from a fluid flow that has been seeded with small tracer particles or smoke. Though, it also might be applied for transportation and deformation analyses of (solid) surfaces. It correlates small samples (interrogation area's) at identic location of two images (an image pair) and correlates them (by using FFT techniques) in order to estimate the local displacement. The software has been written entirely in ANSI-C and some (example) Perl-scripts are included in Gpivtools. The code has been published under the GNU General Public License and only uses libraries that are under this or other Open Source license and are resident in "main" chapter of the Debian distribution. Gpiv c.s. contain four different packages: 1) LIBGPIV: Library for Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) This library contains functions for recording and interrogating images from a fluid flow by means of Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV), resulting into a velocity field of the fluid flow. It includes the core functions for recording, interrogation, data validation, post-processing, input/output and other utility functions. 2) GPIVTOOLS: Command line programs for Particle Image Velocimetry A collection of programs for recording and interrogating images that are generated during a Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) experiment. This is a technique to obtain the velocity field of a fluid flow quantitatively and is performed by tracking tracer particles that have been seeded to a fluid. The technique is also applied for observing deformations at surfaces of (solid) bodies. The package contains: . an image recording program that uses an IEEE1394 (Firewire) IIDC-compliant camera and a program for triggering the camera with a light source (mostly a double cavity Nd-YAG laser). Trigger pulses are sent over the parallel port of the computer using RealTimeLinux and RTAI. . an image processing program for typical filtering and manipulation routines that may be convenient for PIV. . an image interrogation program resulting into estimators of particle image displacements. . validation programs to test on outliers, peak-locking effect and velocity gradients. . post-processing programs for data manipulation (flipping, rotation etc), spatial and time scaling, calculation of spatial averages and derivatived quantities from the PIV data, like vorticity and strain. . miscellaneous programs and scripts to perform image format conversion, batch-processing, pipeline processing (image evaluation, validation and post-processing at once), calculation of time averages from a series of PIV data sets, data-visualization and data-manipulation. 3) GPIV: Graphic User Interface program for Particle Image Velocimetry Gpiv is a Graphic User Interface program using the GTK/GNOME libraries for Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV). This is a technique to obtain the velocity field of a fluid flow quantitatively and is performed by tracking tracer particles that have been seeded to a fluid. The technique is also applied for observing deformations at surfaces of (solid) bodies. The program gives a quick overview of the parameter settings of the processes and allows to change them easily, running the processes, individually or all at once, visualizes and displays the results. The processes that may be invoked by Gpiv are: . Image recording with an IEEE1394 (Firewire) IIDC-compliant camera. This includes the triggering of the camera with the lasers by means of RealTimeLinux and RTAI. Trigger pulses are sent over the parallel port of the computer. . Image interrogation, resulting into estimators of particle image displacements. . Data validation to test on outliers, peak-locking effect and velocity gradients over the interrogation area's. . Data post-processing: data manipulation,spatial and time scaling to obtain a velocity field from the PIV data, calculation of spatial averages, vorticity and strain. The (debianized) source packages can be obtained from at respectively: https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=85208&package_id=88102&release_id=309946 https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=85224&package_id=88126&release_id=309959 https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=85227&package_id=88129&release_id=309962 4) Additional help is needed for a fourth package GPIVTRIG that concerns a kernel module using RTAI. This can be found at: https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=85208&package_id=88102&release_id=309946 The main web page of this project is found at: http://gpiv.sourceforge.net Eventually, I can send compiled packages, including .changes and .dsc directly by email. (.diff and -orig.tar.gz do not exist as the upstream source packages have been developed by me.) Motivation to include it in Debian ---------------------------------- Regarding the number of participants (23) of the PIV-challenge project (http://www.pivchallenge.org/), known free-ware and Open Source projects (about 5 to 6), there are about 30 PIV software programs around for this technique. A few manufactures who are selling (closed-source) software at high rates (order of magnitude EU 10.000,-) only work on the other (MS-WIN) operating systems. A few (three to four) Open Source projects for this technique exist as well. Most of these (except one or two) are using commercial software like Matlab. None of these Open source projects are included in any Linux distribution. The Gpiv c.s is the only Open Source project that also includes the recording of images and the controlling of camera and light source (mostly this are Nd-Yag lasers). As far as I know, only commercial software provide this service, apart from Gpiv c.s. I would like to see this software included in the Debian distribution for several reasons: - PIV now exists for about 20 years. Its popularity is very large and is still increasing. Estimated from the number of conference visitors for this and related techniques, there are about 2000 research groups working with it. So, there is a potential market for Gpiv c.s. - PIV is expensive because of the needed hard and software. This project might be a help for aspirant users to reduce initial costs. - PIV technology is still improving and new technologies are published almost monthly. For experimentalists already using PIV during a some time (4 to 5 years) their commercial software is mostly only used for retrieving the data. The technique to interrogate the images becomes obsolete and need to be upgraded or searched for alternatives. Also here, Gpiv c.s. might pop in for these users. - Debian is running on many different hardware architectures, which not only provides a large freedom of choice for (aspirant) Gpiv c.s. users, but also would be advantageous for these packages as the analyzing processes are high-performance demanding, that even may need a (Beowulf) cluster of computers. - Including Gpiv c.s. will be good advertising for Debian in the world of technical and scientific research, (not only for fluid mechanics but also for material sciences PIV is applied), and probably also in areas of chemical (and mechanical) construction and processing industry. Actually, some advertising for the Debian project has already been done in this context by expressing my hope that the Gpiv c.s. will once be included in the Debian distro during my talk "Presentation of an open source software for PIV" at the Seventh SIG32 & Pivnet workshop: Lisbon July 9-10 2004 (http://www.univ-lille1.fr/pivnet/sig32/lisbon2004/announcement_Lisbon04.html). So, don't let me down, please - I prefer Debian because of its open source and open-minded mentality and philosophy in order to provide a high-quality, non-commercial driven distribution. - Due to my experiences with Debian and the packaging system, I discovered that Debian has a lot to offer. To my opinion, it is easy to maintain and technically the best under the Linux distributions. This is my way to give something back. Sincerely, Gerber van der Graaf -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
