We are searching best ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Reader/Recognition) for Xamarin.Forms. I have already gone through AnyLine and OpenAlpr.
AnyLine seems to be high cost, based on image capture counts.
Regarding OpenAlpr we have a workable solution for Xcode (IOS) and also Xamarin.Android.
The real problem is we couldn't bind the existing xcode project into xamarin.IOS using the sharpie tool (we tried sharpie for some other project, that works fine). Then we realized, that we can't create static library in xcode using an existing framework(openalpr.framework) files.
My question are,
Can we create static library using .framework file? please explain.
Else, Is there any other ANPR tools already available for Xamarin.Forms of Xamarin.IOS?
MicroFocus IDOL has an excellent ANPR Solution which can be accessed via REST APIs. The product is called Media Server.
https://www.microfocus.com/media/flyer/fast_and_comprehensive_vehicle_identification_flyer.pdf
Related
Is it possible to create an iOS library or framework using libgdx (RoboVM) that can be imported into Xcode?
Background:
One of my colleagues has created a 3D visualisation app as a libgdx project for android and windows desktop. It can be compiled to run on iOS using RoboVM. However, I would like to wrap extra native user interface elements around it using Xcode. I know its possible to build the user interface programmatically via RoboVM but I would be keen to investigate if its possible to bring the existing work into Xcode. I don't need to edit the 3D visualisation component but add extra GUI elements around the 3D Vis window. I thought compiling the libgdx (RoboVM) code to a framework or library might be a solution that could be imported?!
Yes you can do it.
All you need to create a method, say initRoboVM(), This will be called by your code when you want to initialize libgdx. You'll need to pass the app path in, which you can hardcode when you're testing.
initRoboVM() will need some modifications, namely it should not call your Java app's main method, well, at least, that's what well behaving libraries should not do IMO. It should also not call rvmShutdown.
You can get further information from here
Thanks :)
I asked the RoboVM team directly. Their answer: It's not a native function, but it certainly can be done.
The complete message...
Hi,
Sorry for the late reply. This use case is not something we're going
to do now. It is possible though if you're prepared to do some
patching of RoboVM. Search the RoboVM Google Group and you should find
others who have managed to get this working.
We get this request every know and then so we will add support for
this eventually.
Regards, Niklas
I am trying to add tesseract to my iOS-App. Im doing the App with Xamarin.iOS.
I tried creating a .dll with btouch and used for that the ported version of tesseract on github(https://github.com/gali8/Tesseract-OCR-iOS). I created the bindings of tesseractOCR.h with Objective-Sharpie and created a
.dll with the TesseractOCR.a file.
Everything worked fine but when trying to build my app with the .dll referenced it gives me the attached Errors.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/w9cvzozgw4gffdx/Screen%20Shot%202014-03-31%20at%2012.46.24.png
How can I fix them?
Thanks in advance
Alex
This seems a good question and I came here looking for Xamarin bindings for Tesseract library, but there was none on this page. After searching, I found that there are a couple of bindings already for Xamarin:
Classic
1. https://github.com/sraiteri/Xamarin-Tesseract-OCR-iOS
Unified
2. https://github.com/jherby2k/Xamarin-Tesseract-OCR-iOS-Unified
Xamarin Forms
3. https://github.com/halkar/Tesseract.Xamarin
Also, there seems to be an active and modern porting to swift, and can be found here:
https://github.com/WhitneyLand/SwiftOpenCV
This discussion on Xamarin forum seems also very useful for anybody interested in this question:
https://forums.xamarin.com/discussion/3673/help-adding-tesseract-as-a-ios-binding-project
Disclaimer: I have not tried any of them yet, just finished my research, now gonna start my experimentation :)
This is because Tesseract uses c++ and the binding needs to know this.
I would suggest creating a binding project as per the tutorial at Xamarin. Then this Xamarin forum post gives great information on how to add c++ to the LinkWith attribute.
I've seen project such as ios-universal-framework, but I want to know why XCode iOS does not natively support having a framework. Is it some kind of legal issue. The static library option is not good enough because I want to be able to use .dylib files in my framework.
A little background on what I want to do with a framework. I have a project that is generated from Unity3D, and when we update, we have to manually add back all of our project changes.
What I want is to use a framework that can store most of those external libraries and resources to make it easier to upgrade our project when updates are released.
From a security perspective no code is allowed to be dynamically loaded, thus only static libraries are allowed.
It is possible to create static psudo-frameworks. Take a look at GitHub iOS-Universal-Framework.
What you need is a PosprocessBuilder as described in the build pipeline described in the Unity3d Documentation.
You can manage the Xcode configurations in this pipeline using scripts like the Xcode Zerg.
I've used one python script written by a guy called Calvin Rien that worked really well, if you want to know more about this script this blog post should give you a hint.
What you really need to look for to you automate the these steps is to look for posts of Continuous Integration using Unity 3d and iOS like this one:
Unity3d: from commit to deployment onto tester devices in 20 min using Jenkins
I want to embed mono into my iOS application. I do not want to use MonoTouch. I want to embed mono manually like this:
http://www.mono-project.com/Embedding_Mono
I've have done this successfully on windows, using the above guide and various online examples, here's a good Windows one:
https://github.com/inkdev/Embedded-Mono-Sample
However I'm having trouble getting started on iOS. I know it can be done, companies like Unity3d use it to power their game engine tech. I can't work out how to compile and link mono for iOS nor can I find any good instructions to do so. I've not found any help using search engines, they exclusively seem to turn up articles about MonoTouch (Xamarin's own commercial wrapper around embedding mono into iOS).
Here's a few more noteworthy links:
http://www.mono-project.com/Mono:ARM
http://web.archive.org/web/20090106023130/http://mono-project.com./Mono:Iphone
Is there somewhere I can get precompiled libraries and headers for Mono for iOS, so in my C code I can simply link and include?
Could someone provide and example of how to compile mono for iOS ARM CPUs?
MonoTouch provides a great wrapper around all of the iOS Objective C APIs, however you don't necessarily need all of that, as I understand it should be possible to compile and then embed mono yourself and then use pInvoke to call the few native functions you will need.
Any help would be greatly appreciated, ty!
While not exactly what you are asking for, iOS 7 has added support for scripting with JavaScript. Many people finding this post may want to use this new capability to achieve what you are attempting. Link
As Rolf said, you need to read Mono Licensing document first. Embedding mono on iOS requires special permission from Xamarin.
You need to change several build settings from XCode, and here's what I did.
Open (or Create) iOS project
Add libmonoboehm-2.0.a to your project(You can use another version of .a file)
It's in Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework/Versions/{version}/lib folder
Project -> Build Settings -> Header Search
Add path: /Library/Frameworks/Mono.frameworks/Versions/{version}/include/mono-2.0
Project -> Build Settings -> Library Search
Add path: /Library/Frameworks/Mono.frameworks/Versions/{version}/lib
And, code like this in your iOS application
#include <mono/jit/jit.h>
#include <mono/metadata/mono-config.h>
#include <mono/metadata/assembly.h>
#include <mono/metadata/environment.h>
// ....
const char* dllFile = "ABSOLUTE_PATH_TO_DLL_OR_EXE";
domain = mono_jit_init(dllFile);
mAssembly = mono_domain_assembly_open(domain, dllFile);
// ... Do whatever you want :)
Please remember. You need to get license from Xamarin when embedding mono on iOS.
Enjoy :)
We have a fairly rich e-learning app, built mostly using cocos2d. Currently we are in alpha and want to setup our project structure so we can also build a Mac version to target the Mac App store. It is about 80% cocos2d with some intitial screens in UIKit which will have to be ported to Mac (re-written).
What is the recommended setup for targeting both the Mac and iOS app stores from a single code base? I assume the choices are:
Create 2 xCode projects in the same application source code root folder and use each project to build a single target. This would be: Project.xcodeproj and ProjectMac.xcodeproj
Add a new Mac target to our existing iPad application project and then fiddle with target membership to get the desired results. This would be just: Project.xcodeproj
Further complicating the situation is that we currently use cocos2d as a static library for the iOS app. We also have a library called CoreInfrastructure that has a lot of code we use across all our projects. Recently I have figured out that I can create a project to simultaneously build a framework targeting Mac and a library targeting iOS from the same code base. This is done by starting with a framework project and adding a target to build a static lib for iOS.
So just wanted to get everyone's opinion and insight. Anyone know of any caveats to watch out for in the above choices? Anyone who is building for Mac and iOS app stores simultaneously care to share their structure? Adding a target worked on our library code ... is that the way to go for the application as well?
Are there any issues doing archive and distribution builds for either choice?
Thanks in advance.
WWDC session "Sharing code between iOS and OS X" answers all the basic questions in this topic. iWork team presented how they have got away with creating Pages, Keynote and Numbers with shared code base for both iOS and OS X.
The key for their project was using:
separate Xcode targets for iOS and OS X
separate project for the shared code in a form of a .framework
target dependency on the framework from the point above
I encourage to watch the video or read the transcript from this session:
WWDC 2014 Sharing code between iOS and OS X
ASCIIWWDC transcript
I recently used kstenerud's iOS Universal Framework to build a shared framework codebase that works for both iOS and Mac apps. I just needed to manually add a target for a Cocoa framework after I had created a project for an iOS framework. That way I can develop the sharable code once in the framework and link it in both the iOS and Mac apps. You can even make the framework contain UIKit-specific code for your iOS app and AppKit-specific code for your Mac apps. I wrote about it in my blog if you are interested.
For the applications use two separate projects. Using multiple targets for iOS and Mac in one project is very useful if they are sharing a library or framework. However, in your top level application almost nothing is shared. The UIKit code will need to be totally rewritten to use AppKit, the dependencies will be different, and even most of the project settings will vary.
Of course if you really want to see everything at once you can put both platform specific application projects and all the shared dependent library/framework projects in a single workspace. This is more a question of work style. If you want to switch back and forth between the two frequently this makes the most sense. If you want to simplify what you are looking at you can put them in separate workspaces that share many of the same projects. Separate workspaces has the disadvantage that a project can only be open in one workspace at a time so you effectively can only work on one at a time.
I just use multi-platform static library targets for the shared sources. You will need to expand that to the dependencies, however. If you have platform dependent implementations, you may want to create supplemental export libraries for those symbols.
So your structure might take this form:
CoreInfrastructure - cross platform static library.
PlatShared - cross platform static library.
PlatSpecific-OS X - OS X static library (or framework).
PlatSpecific-iOS - iOS static library.
The OS X app links to CoreInfrastructure, PlatShared, PlatSpecific-OSX, Cocos for OS X, and system libs.
The iOS app links to CoreInfrastructure, PlatShared, PlatSpecific-iOS, Cocos for iOS, and sys libs.
Problem (I've found) is, there are a lot of people who have not had much/any experience developing and maintaining complex project structures in Xcode. It's a pain (IMO) to setup duplicate targets, and properly maintain them as they grow -- even when they all refer to the same source files. That's why i prefer minimal targets and proper dependency structure.