The FORmicidae Tracker (FORT) is an advanced online tracking system designed specifically for studying social insects, particularly ants and bees, FORT utilizes fiducial markers for extended individual tracking. Its key features include real-time online tracking and a modular design architecture that supports distributed processing. The project's current repositories encompass comprehensive hardware blueprints, technical documentation, and associated firmware and software for online tracking and offline data analysis.
This repository host an utility program to draw families of tag on a paper sheet
- go language
- opencv to build the april tag examples
This software is not to be installed system wise, but rather used locally.
cd tag-layouter
git submodule init
fit submodule update
make
# make may fails once on OpenCV4 system, just re-make once
makeTo see all command line options:
./tag-layouter -h| Flag | Description | Default | |
|---|---|---|---|
| -f | --file= | File path to output | |
| -t | --family-and-size= | Tag family and size to use. format: 'name:size:begin-end' | |
| --column-number= | Number of columns to display multiple families | 0 | |
| --individual-tag-border= | Space between the border of two tags | 0.2 | |
| --cut-line-ratio= | Ratio of the border between tags that should be a cut line | 0.0 | |
| --family-margin= | Margin between tag families [mm] | 2.0 | |
| --arena-number= | Number of tags to display in an arena | 0 | |
| -W | --width= | Width to use [mm] | 210 |
| -H | --height= | Height to use [mm] | 297 |
| --paper-border= | Border width for arena or paper [mm] | 20.0 | |
| -d | --dpi= | DPI to use | 2400 |
name:size:begin-end: name specifies the tag family.
size specifies the edge length of a single tag in mm.
begin-end specifies the range of tag IDs. Use 0- if all IDs of a given family should be printed.
Using the arena-number flag produces a page with a number of tags of one given tag familiy placed in random positions and orientations. This is useful to test the setup, e.g. the lighting and camera setting.
Using the column-number flag, produces the sets of the tag families specified by multiple -t (or --family-and-size) arguments arranged rectangularily and in the given number of columns for cutting.
The individual-tag-border specifies the the border between two adjacent tags of the same family.
The familiy-margin option specifies the space between two tag families.
The cut-line-ratio specifies the thickness of the cutting line (ratio of the thickness of the printed cutting line and the disctance between adjacent tags).
widht, height, paper-border and dpi are specified with respect to the printing page layout.
The tag-layouter program will have a lot of option. One solution is
to summarize them in a shell script, such as [generate_dlr.sh].
The best option for prininting is to use raw image format rather than PDF / SVG. Indeed the ratserisation of these files may produce artifact that will leave the tags unusable.
A good option is to prefer the TIF format and use a program like GIMP to print it.
You can add resolution information to any tiff image usinge imagemagick
To install imagemagick on Debian/Ubuntu :
sudo apt install imagemagickAnd to set the correct image resolution (here 1200 PPI ) :
convert <my-file.tiff> -units PixelsPerInch -density 1200 <my-file.tiff>