The Swadling Clan

After trying to use a few different methods to get an accurate measure of the length of a snake, I found a piece of software called Snake Measurer (available at Serpentine Widgets) that allows you to measure them using an image after doing some simple calibration. While this works fine, I find it a lacking a few features and so (since I am a geek) I wrote my own, more feature complete version for fun

Introducing HerpMeasure

Features

This one basically does everything that Snake Measurer does, however it has some additional features which I though the original really needed. New features include …

• Able to read the majority of image format (JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP and more).
• Allows users to change the zoom factor on the image.
• Allows users to scroll around a large image.
• Calibration process includes the measurement units and also allows changing the units by recalibration.
• Misplaced points can be dragged to the correct location.
• Labels can be dragged to a new location.
• Able to save the current view to a file for later use.
• Able to save a snapshot of the current session to an image
• Able to load and edit multiple views at the same time.
• Able to load files by dragging them onto the window
• Colours and Font are configurable
• Displays date image was taken for supported image types

Tips

Some tips to help you get the most out of this kind of software:

1. Ensure the snake is on a flat surface. Tiles are good and you can use them for your calibration lengths
2. Ensure the image is taken from directly above the snake. taking images at angles will give inaccurate results
3. Try to make the distance used for calibration as big as possible. A small error when using a short calibration length is actually quite large when converted to a percentage!
4. During calibration, zoom in so that it is easier to make the calibration points as accurate as possible.
5. When adding points, make the points on the snakes curves closer together to help improve accuracy.

I have included a sample JPG image as well as a sample HerpMeasure file with the installation (and also in the zip file) so that you can see how the application works. They are both located in a Samples folder in the installation directory, and the HerpMeasure file is also accessible via the Windows start men.

Known Issues

General

There are no know issues at this time

Windows Specific

No Windows specific issues at this stage

Mono Specific

I have done some brief testing using an up to date Mono version (running on the latest Kubuntu release under VMware). While it still does the basics, a few of the fancy features don't work at all. If you want to have a go with Mono on a non-Windows platform these are some things you will come up against.

• Loading HerpMeasure files is broken on Linux and causes the application to crash.
• Saving HerpMeasure files is broken and writes a corrupt file.
• Maximising the MDI child window (the one showing the image) causes the toolbar on the MDI child to be hidden. Workaround is to turn off the toolbar on the main window using the view
• It is a little slow on VMWare. might be better on a real machine, I'll check it out later.

Requirements

That this is a .Net application (written in C#) and requires the .Net 2.0 Framework in order to run, however if you use the supplied setup.exe it "should" detect any missing dependencies and prompt you to download them from Microsoft's site if required. I haven't tested on a machine without .Net installed so "your mileage may vary".

If you want to  try running it under Mono then I assume you have some idea what you are doing. If you get errors about missing dll's make sure you have installed support for version 2.0 framework.

Download Latest Stable Version

Windows Installer

This includes Setup.exe, which will check for missing dependencies, as well as HerpMeasure Installer.msi. The latter will do the installation with no dependency checks. If you are unsure what this all means, please use Setup.exe!

HerpMeasure 1.2 Installer

Zip Archive

I've made an archive so that Non-Windows users can have a crack at running it. If you decide to do so, then use it at your own risk. There are a few known issues that I have found when running under Mono, and I have listed some above. Providing you only want to load an image and perform a measurement then it will probably work enough to do that.

HerpMeasure 1.2 Files

Feedback

I welcome any feedback from users. If you have found a bug, or if you have a feature that you would like added, just add a comment and (providing you aren't trying to sell me Viagra or a mail order bride) it will probably appear below.

Donations

Even though this is free software, if you use it software and find it useful please consider making a donation via the PayPal Widget on this page. Funds will help keep this server up and running and will also assist in the future development of this and other applications.