Linux support

[tom-f-oconnell]

What are the main obstacles you are aware of preventing operation in Linux? The camera drivers?

I haven't dove too much into the code yet, and I'm just trying to get a rough estimate of how much effort it would be to add Linux support myself.

[flysorter]

Camera API is the big impediment to getting this to work on linux, I suspect. There may be other Windows dependencies hiding in the code, but nothing that couldn't be worked around.

We depend on https://github.com/morefigs/py-ic-imaging-control to interface with the camera (beyond the normal OpenCV camera interface, which isn't sufficient for those devices). That code is Windows-only. The Imaging Source does have Linux support for the cameras (https://github.com/TheImagingSource/tiscamera), but no Python bindings.

I'd consider switching cameras if you're building up a new robot. Basler has a Python API (https://github.com/basler/pypylon), and their Ace cameras are comparably priced.

[tom-f-oconnell]

I wrote an abstraction layer for cameras, and I put both the pyicic and OpenCV supported cameras behind that. I'll try to sort it into a pull request in the next couple of days.

It doesn't seem like there will be other issues re: Linux support.

[flysorter]

Right on! Will close this out after pull request, etc.