Best Programming language for development

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I prefer C++ mainly because the OpenCV library itself has been written in C++.

I have found, from my personal experiences, that for OpenCV code written in C++, it is much easier to track what is going wrong and where because your application code is "closer" to the library implementation (by virtue of using the same programming language).

In addition to that, a lot of API documentation is only available for C++.

The Python documentation, on account of being comparatively recent, is not as extensive/mature as the C++ counterpart.

It is also easier to interface with and try out the newest additions to the library (though in experimental phase) because they are added in the form of C++ code.

The only scenario where I found the OpenCV Python API to be preferable is when you want to use OpenCV as part of a web-based application because it becomes easier to integrate the OpenCV code with frameworks such as Django.

I use C++, and never used python, so this may not be accurate. But my experience is that the development environment, IDE etc. are more important than the language you use when it comes to setting up opencv. I did a couple of projects in Visual Studio, one with shared libraries and the other with the libraries included in the app.

In either case you need to pay attention to the opencv version used in the guides/tutorials. There are significant changes in file structure and naming conventions between versions. And more often when you search for answers online you will end up with a tutorial/installation guide/code in another version of opencv than the one you are using. In case of visual studio this mean different dll files to be included in the linker. In my case I just checked the dll files after installing opencv and just included those files instead of the ones given in the visual studio guide. The same goes for the code samples you find online.

As for the pi, I have done something similar with IP cameras on banana pi. It would work but you will most likely have to compile it yourself. Which is not complicated but is quite slow, if I remember correctly it took me several hours on banana pi to compile it alls. And you need to include ffmpeg support and of course ffmpeg itself. Once the initial setup is done you don't have to worry about it again.

I would be interested in collaborating on a project like this, but I am not US based. If you would be interested in a long distance collaboration you can let me know.