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Photo Image Capture

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    Photo Image Capture

    We have a photo image capture system that produces bothe employee and customer ID cards. It is a stand-alone product that is not at all easy to interface to.

    We are toying with the idea of creating an integrated application to our current system where we could just call up the customer or employee record and then do a twain capture of their image, save that image as a .jpg, and place an image reference on the customer or employee record in the database.

    Has anyone had any experience using an image capturing device interfacing with Alpha software? If so, would you be willing to share your experience?

    Thanks in advance,

    Tom

    #2
    RE: Photo Image Capture

    Tom,

    I had a similar situation. I developed this back when I was using version 4.5, so my options were even more limited. I originally envisioned developing an ActiveX control which could interface with the camera nicely, but Alpha has limited support for ActiveX controls. Plus, developing the control from scratch would take a lot of time and testing. So, I decided to use the imaging program that comes with Windows. From Alpha, I launch the program and open a file which I called picture_import.jpg (the imaging program can take as a command line argument the name of the file to open). The client then acquires the image from the camera, saves it, and closes the program. Now, back in Alpha, the client clicks a simple button that opens that file, gets the data from the image file, imports it into a Jpeg field, and saves the record. It is not a as "clean" of a method that I originally envisioned, but it is simple enough for my client and is relatively stable.

    Greg

    Comment


      #3
      RE: Photo Image Capture

      Sounds pretty clean to me, thanks. I'll check it out.

      Tom

      Comment


        #4
        RE: Photo Image Capture

        Morning Tom

        Is your capturing device tethered to your computer system or do you save to cards?

        Duane

        Comment


          #5
          RE: Photo Image Capture

          Currently we are using an Instant-ID System to capture images and produce ID cards. It captures an image using twain to the computer. My problem with it is that all information is stored in some sort of hybrid .mdb database. Access cannot even open it. I have a full system for customers and employees, only it is missing the image piece. We have to use Instant-ID's export utilities to get the images out of their database.

          What I really want to be able to do is to call up a customer or employee, click on a button which will take me to the "capture" and then save the image as a jpg. The alpha table will get a pointer to the .jpg file. I really don't want to store the image in the record, just the image reference. Once I have the image, I can easily replicate the ID card part.

          Comment


            #6
            RE: Photo Image Capture

            Tom

            If you were to export each photo as it was taken to a 'photos' folder, presuming the exported filenames have some kind of ascending naming convention, you can make a button to generate an array of the file names, get the last one taken by sorting decending, have Alpha grab the first one, and have Alpha drop that filename into your table's Img Ref field.
            Scott E helped me make some stuff like this.

            Duane

            Comment


              #7
              RE: Photo Image Capture

              We have a routine in place now to do exports to a folder. What we want to do is to eliminate the whole instant-id piece. I have a Kodak DVC325 camera on my desk and am experimenting now with some x-basic to copy the image captured to an appropriate folder on our server, point the image reference record to that image, then display it.

              I think I'll be OK.

              Will post my results.

              Tom

              Comment


                #8
                RE: Photo Image Capture

                I put the following script under the "capture Photo" button on my form.

                dim shared image as C
                image = ut(image-"image)
                ui_msg_box("test",image)
                ans1 = ui_msg_box(agency+" Customer Image Capture","Click 'OK' When Finished with Photo",17)

                if ans1 "" 1
                ui_msg_box(agency+" Customer Image Capture","Action Cancelled at User Request")
                end
                end if
                if file.exists(path+"\images"+chr(92)+image+".bmp")
                file.remove(path+"\images"+chr(92)+image+".bmp")
                end if
                file.copy("c:\images\test1.bmp",path+"\images"+chr(92)+image+".bmp")

                form.Refresh_Layout()

                end

                It is fairly simple in that it waits for the user to capture and save the image, then it copie it to the folder I need. (test1 is just my 'test' image file.)

                All works as expected...EXCEPT, the image is not displayed on the form. The field I am displaying from my record is an "image file reference" field. If the image file exists, the image is displayed. What I don't understand is that after I capture a new image for a particular record, the new image is not displayed until after I exit alpha and return back. What am I doing wrong??

                Tom

                Comment


                  #9
                  RE: Photo Image Capture

                  Bump,

                  Hoping Someone can help.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    RE: Photo Image Capture

                    I assume you have tried a screen refresh?

                    Russ

                    Comment


                      #11
                      RE: Photo Image Capture

                      Tom

                      I see the same effect. If the content but not the name of a bitmap file is changed, the change doesn't show until Alpha is closed and reopened. However, this thread may be of some help.

                      http://msgboard.alphasoftware.com/alphaphorum/read.php3?sortby=lastreply&direction=desc&num=11&id=51161&thread=51012

                      Instead of copying the bitmap to a specific file name, change the reference in the table record to an existing name.

                      Jerry

                      Comment


                        #12
                        RE: Photo Image Capture

                        I think they came up before and had to do with some caching that Alpha was doing for speed.

                        Comment


                          #13
                          RE: Photo Image Capture

                          Pardon my ignorance, but HOW????

                          I need something consistant with each customer or employee. Instead of having an image stored with the table, I just thought it would be cleaner to have an "image file reference". Cache or no cache, If the image file is modified, then Alpha should look to the modified file.

                          Comment


                            #14
                            RE: Photo Image Capture

                            Tom

                            After some experimentation, I got the following to work on a form with an image file reference field named "image_file"

                            dim fname as c
                            new_filename = (name of image file with path in quotes)
                            fname = "=filename_decode("+quote(new_filename) + ")"
                            tbl = table.current()
                            tbl.change_begin()
                            tbl.image_file = fname
                            tbl.change_end()
                            topparent.resynch()

                            For example, if the image file I want to insert is named "mypic.bmp" and it is in the "c:\images" folder

                            new_filename = "c:\images\mypic.bmp"

                            This changed the image file reference to the new file name and did refresh the image on the form.

                            Jerry

                            Comment


                              #15
                              RE: Photo Image Capture

                              Thanks, Jerry, I'll give it a shot.

                              Comment

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