title: Dice face value recognition
body: <p>I’m trying to build a simple application that will recognize the values of two 6-sided dice. I’m looking for some general pointers, or maybe even an open source project.</p>
  
  <p>The two dice will be black and white, with white and black pips respectively. Their distance to the camera will always be the same, but their position and orientation on the playing surface will be random. </p>
  
  <p><a href="http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/9160bdd073.jpg" rel="noreferrer">Dice http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/9160bdd073.jpg</a><br>
  <em>(not the best example, the surface will be a more distinct color and the shadows will be gone)</em></p>
  
  <p>I have no prior experience with developing this kind of recognition software, but I would assume the trick is to first isolate the faces by searching for the square profile with a dominating white or black color (the rest of the image, i.e. the table/playing surface, will in distinctly different colors), and then isolate the pips for the count. Shadows will be eliminated by top down lighting.</p>
  
  <p>I’m hoping the described scenario is so simple (read: common) it may even be used as an “introductory exercise” for developers working on OCR technologies or similar computer vision challenges. </p>
  
  <p><strong>Update:</strong></p>
  
  <p>I did some further googling and came across <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUwCbQ5ZZRw" rel="noreferrer">this video</a> which strangely enough is <strong><em>exactly</em></strong> what I'm looking for. It also seems it's the <a href="http://opencv.willowgarage.com/wiki/Welcome" rel="noreferrer">OpenCV project</a> is my best bet so far, I'll try and use it with this <a href="http://code.google.com/p/opencvdotnet/" rel="noreferrer">other project, OpenCVDotNet</a> or <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/emgucv/" rel="noreferrer">Emgu CV</a>.</p>
  
  <p><strong>Update:</strong><br>
  Still struggling, can't get Emgu CV to work. </p>
  
  <p>Ideas, pointers, thoughts, etc are still very much welcome!</p>