CameraInterface

CameraInterface

A lightweight .NET library providing a clean abstraction for working with camera devices and image data. It defines common camera properties, supported pixel formats, and efficient serialization/deserialization of image buffers.

Features

• 🎥 Camera Abstraction — Provides the ICamera interface with common properties (resolution, offsets, ranges, exposure, and image format).
• 🖼 Image Data Handling — Encapsulates pixel buffers in the ImageData struct with width, height, stride, and format metadata.
• 🔄 Serialization Support — Convert images to and from byte arrays or streams for efficient storage and transfer.
• 🧩 Supported Formats — Multiple pixel formats such as Mono8, Mono16, Rgb24, Rgb32, Raw8, Raw16.
• ⚡ Zero-Copy Parsing — Optimized APIs like TryFromMemory avoid unnecessary allocations when possible.
• ⏱ Units Integration — Exposure times use UnitsNet for type-safe duration handling.

Installation

Add the project or library to your solution. If published as a NuGet package, install via:

dotnet add package CameraInterface

Usage

Implementing a Camera

using CameraInterface;
using UnitsNet;

public class DummyCamera : ICamera
{
    public int Width { get; set; } = 640;
    public int Height { get; set; } = 480;
    public int XOffset { get; set; } = 0;
    public int YOffset { get; set; } = 0;
    public (int Min, int Max) WidthRange { get; set; } = (320, 1920);
    public (int Min, int Max) HeightRange { get; set; } = (240, 1080);
    public (int Min, int Max) XOffsetRange { get; set; } = (0, 100);
    public (int Min, int Max) YOffsetRange { get; set; } = (0, 100);
    public CameraImageFormat ImageFormat { get; set; } = CameraImageFormat.Rgb24;
    public Duration Exposure { get; set; } = Duration.FromMilliseconds(10);

    public ImageData GetImage()
    {
        // Provide pixel data from the camera here
        var pixels = new byte[Width * Height * 3]; // Rgb24 = 3 bytes per pixel
        return new ImageData(pixels, Width, Height, Width * 3, ImageFormat);
    }
}

Working with ImageData

Serialize to Array

var camera = new DummyCamera();
ImageData img = camera.GetImage();

byte[] serialized = img.ToArray();

Deserialize from Array

ImageData img2 = ImageData.FromArray(serialized);

Zero-Copy Parse from Memory

if (ImageData.TryFromMemory(serialized, out var img3))
{
    Console.WriteLine($"Image parsed: {img3.Width}x{img3.Height}, {img3.Format}");
}

Read/Write from Stream

using var ms = new MemoryStream();
img.WriteTo(ms);

ms.Position = 0;
ImageData img4 = ImageData.ReadFrom(ms);

Supported Image Formats

• Mono8 – 8-bit grayscale
• Mono16 – 16-bit grayscale
• Rgb24 – 24-bit RGB
• Rgb32 – 32-bit RGB (with alpha or padding)
• Raw8 / Raw16 – Raw image buffers

License

MIT License — free to use, modify, and distribute.