Monthly Archives: March 2019

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CLoser to a MongoDB C and C++ Driver Build

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The CMake run for the C driver seems to always pull in cygwin headers that don’t work. I had to manually remove them from the build configuration. I had to disable the ICU (also not present). I added the installer that is used. Once these were done, things almost completely built and installed.

I’ve had to select the obsolete python 2 interpreter as the default for the C++ drivers and hack the version for the C drivers to 0.0.0 (I’m guessing this is related to the python problems as that code seems to pull version numbers for the packages).

Building the C++ drivers now and hoping this goes well. I’ll be using the 64 bit drivers if all of this works. Being able to push to MongoDB from C and C++ code will be very helpful if this all finishes and runs.

3D Programming, C#, C++, MongoDB, Projects, Sandbox, Topics, Unity, Win32

Bouncing Around a Bit Today

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Building C++ supporting libraries on my small dev machine. Looking at another pass of C++/CLI work and some more thinking about motion capture options.

I’ve built zlib and bzlib2 yesterday. To get these building with VS 2017 I built them with their standard build procedures (which appeared to build 32 bit libraries) and then created visual studio 2017 projects to build the same pieces using fresh settings.

I’ve got boost, openssl, opencv and the mongodb c and c++ libraries on my list for today. The mongodb libraries are my primary target here though all of the above are of interest. This is also what is driving my CMake reading as several of these libraries use CMake for their builds.

I’m pretty interested in C++/CLI as a way to get access to C and C++ functionality from C#. Given the productivity that C# provides, access to C and C++ APIs and libraries from that environment would help quite a bit. My primary driver was access to the Win32 file ID API for some file management work, but Win32 APIs keep coming up now and again. I do need to take a look as some newer C# libraries that Malcolm suggested that may provide pre-packaged access here.

In the past, I’ve run into build issues when combining C# and C++/CLI in the same project. I expect this was setup issues so I’m now looking to take a more serious look at this.

The motion capture work will start out with OpenCV and getting my web cams running with code behind them to process the images. I’m thinking that pre-recording things and then post processing might be a good idea…using a light strobe to synchronize things could simplify time sync as well. Much to consider…

Next Steps

I’ve got boost, zlib and libbz2 built on boojum now. Next step will be to test the installs with a small program or two. Hoping that all went well and I have usable, native, win64 libraries available.

Once those have been checked out I’ll take another run at building the MongoDB drivers…this time on boojum rather than chaos. Boojum has a shorter history and is distinctly less cluttered than chaos so I’m hoping that this just works. Expecting less than that though…I’ll probably need to dig deeper into he CMake configs to get where I want to go. I’ll update as I move forward…now off to lunch though.

C++, Projects, Sandbox, Topics, Unity

Looking at 3D location of Objects with Multiple Cameras

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We tried doing some motion capture with a kinect 2 today. Results were mixed though less than ideal.

I am thinking of using OpenCV to acquire images and use them to register locations in three-space. I currently have two high quality cameras and a lower quality one to play with…I expect that if things go well I’ll likely pick up a third higher quality camera to work with along with some hard-mounts for them in the basement. Ideally I’d love to be able to code up some decent motion capture functionality using cameras and reference marks on limbs.

A bit of experimentation will be required in order to get there though.

I am wondering whether a faster, lower resolution webcam might do better for this. There are some $20.00 a piece cameras with USB-2 interface out there (Microsoft Lifecam-3000 or Logitech C270) instead of the higher-end, USB-3 autofocus Logitech C930e. Both wondering whether the lower resolution and USB-2 may provide a higher frame rate and whether fixed focus will stay consistent without periodic refocus hits.

C++, MongoDB, Projects, Topics

Need to Learn More About CMake

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I’ve been looking at using MongoDB from C++ and trying to build the MongoDB C and C++ driver code. So far, the build files that CMake has generated on my main development box (targeting Visual Studio 2017) have pulled in cygwin header files and generated various other problems. I don’t really understand why the tool would be getting confused like this, but I want a better understanding of how CMake decides where to look for build files and configuration and how to control that.

I’m sure that having cygwin and visual studio on the same machine should be a workable configuration so I expect there are ways to keep CMake from pulling in the wrong files.

Hoping to get to the point where I can cleanly build these drivers and get them working in some 64 bit visual C++ code.

Daily Blog, Thoughts

Interesting Looking AI Board

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Just saw an article on Tom’s Hardware talking about an affordably priced AI board from NVidia here. At $99.00 with 4 GBytes of memory, a pretty capable ARM and a GPU that is usable for neural net work it looks intersting. No wireless (neither bluetooth or WiFi) but should be capable of taking a USB dongle (thought it seems the default kernel lacks driver support).

C#, C++, MongoDB, Projects, Sandbox, Topics

Giving up on MongoDB from C++ for now

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I’ve tried building this thing using CMake and Visual Studio and CMake seems to keep picking up cygwin headers for Visual Studio builds and I can’t seem to make things better. For now not worth the pain. I’m probably going back to C# with C++/CLI to get this working with C APIs and C# for MongoDB access.

I’m certain that I could get this building with enough effort. The code looks reasonable and I can put together the projects myself. I’m not all that inclined to go there though as I’d have to re-do this every time through. I’m not familiar enough with CMake to try modifying that part of the process.

Ok…not quite giving up. I did find that CMake appears to be adding a cygwin header folder to the projects. If I manually remove this from them the build goes further. The default build configuration appears to be 32 bit which is also an issue for me. Perhaps I’ll do a little more before I completely give up.

C++, MongoDB, Projects, Sandbox

C++ MongoDB Driver Circles within Circles…

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Looking at getting a bit of C++ file processing code done for some home sandbox tooling reasons. Grabbed the source code.

Source code asks for boost as a polyfill for C++ 2017 (optional and something else) with MSVC 2017. Grabbed boost. Got to build boost, really would like to build the full kit if I’m going to build it at all. Grabber zlib and libbz2. Now looking at any other dependencies needed to build a reasonably complete boost build locally.

Heading off to see the Captain Marvel movie and will continue with this (along with some presentation prep I need to do this weekend and some overflow work items I need to look into). Should be an interesting if busy weekend…

This is once again reminding me why C# and Java are so much more productive than C++ for many things. In C# I’d nuget the mongodb drivers. Up to date versions of any supporting libraries would be pulled in as needed and I’d be writing code in short order. I love C++ for its power and flexibility, but as a tool to get higher level logic in place it is not holding up well…

Add in building bjam to build boost with and then grabbing CMake to build the mongodb drivers with…making sure that the build processes find the right compiler (I’ve had at least one run where my build grabbed the g++ compiler out of the path even though the visual studio tools were there as well.

Cluster-1, Daily Blog, Projects, Sandbox, Thoughts, Topics, Unity

Unity Investigations…

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I’ve been splitting my experiments with Unity between this blog and pandamallet.com (where I put ‘creative’ things.

More graphical content and thoughts on game design possibilities have lived on the creative side while more technical, C# coding and Unity script coding bits have lived here.

I’m going to move to keeping everything in one place for convenience and accessibility. From here on, I’m going to put all of the game programming related content on the creative side and keep my career blog for more directly coding related items and similar things.

As pandamallet.com does not share with linked-in at this time, this will mean that anyone who was watching these goings-on through linked-in notifications will need to pop over to pandamallet to see what’s up going forward. I will look at making sure that all of my sites (pandamallet, my main blog and my career blog) are publishing to my twitter feed when something new is added to make this (perhaps) a bit easier.