Friday, December 13, 2013

Laptop Power Saving and Security using Face detection - Part 1

12 December 2013 - 7th Semester - Digital Image Processing - Sir Ali Javed - University of Engg. and Tech. Taxila.

This blog post is about my semester project. The project is a small application that serves as a prototype for an idea I am planning to implement later. 



At the end of DIP semester course, we are supposed to submit a semester project, a report and a viva is conducted from the report.


I never liked the subject much, but I was very much interested in the OpenCV API and the samples that were provided with OpenCV.


(I ran a few on my computer, and before I knew I had already spend 3 hours going through the examples :D. They have samples for Face detection, OCR, Traffic Signal detection and a lot more, and Yes all of them were in C#!)


My idea was to implement a small application that can:



  • Security : Lock the computer screen if the user is not in-front of the machine for a couple of minutes. (No face detected for X no of minutes.)
  • Power Saving : Turn the Monitor Screen Off if the user is not looking, Turn back on when the user is facing the screen.
  • Customizability : Users can specify the time interval for Capture, Screen Light Timeout and System Lock Time out. Users can enable or disable any of the feature.
Some things that I have learned while creating this application:
  • I was using a laptop to test this application. The small indicator with the webcam was continuously ON while I was testing the app. It was annoying. (Is it possible to turn it off? Requires further investigation)
  • Turning the monitor screen OFF and ON frequently. Could possible reduce the screen life? I am not sure. I can't risk me new touch screen laptop while finding that out .. :)
I am using:
  • Devexpress UI controls
  • EmguCV for .Net. (A wrapper over OpenCV)
  • Windows API
I will update the blog post once the application is completed and I have some snapshots and a sample to share ;) 

Happy Blogging! :)


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