CooRecorder basics

You can use your computer scanner to take interesting photos of things which can be placed on the top of your scanner. An image scanned as a photo from such a thing can be displayed on your computer screen. You can enlarge the photo to see interesting details and you can write down coordinates of these details. It is a very tedious job to do this very manual registration if you have an interest in lots of data for later statistical analysis.

Our CooRecorder program solves the problem by letting you just click on interesting points in your picture. The coordinates of these points are then automatically written onto a file which you can later analyze with another program.

Breeding for better bees. For bee keeping it is a matter of measuring characteristic data from bee wings. This data may tell if the wings come from bees of a pure breed or from a mixed up breed or from some special breed. Mixed up bees are often angry. A bee keeper tries to avoid angry bees, because they annoy his neighbours and he gets stung by them. Identifying a breed is also a matter of breeding for a lot of other qualities than just non-aggressiveness.

Dating old houses and other constructions of tree. For dendrochronological data it is a matter of measuring the width of tree rings. A long sequence of such widths from a tree sample can be used to find out which year the tree was cut. I.e. to find out when an old house was probably built.

Working procedure when using CooRecorder

A magnifying glass, a demagnifying glass, a fit on screen button, an actual pixels button and a hand tool button (for dragging the image over your screen). The scroll bars are only shown when the image does not fit on the screen.

To the left of the magnifying glass is a percentage indicator showing the current magnification of your image. 100% means that one pixel in  your image is shown as one pixel on your screen.

The magnification glass is a "zoom in" button. First click on the button. Then click on the appropriate point in your image. The view will zoom in an extra 50%. Click again to zoom more. Click on the demagnifying glass to zoom out of the image.
The magnification glass is also available through the Z button on your keyboard.

To drag the image over the screen, first click on the hand tool button (or press the H key). Then click on a point in the image and keep the mouse button pressed down. Then move (drag) the mouse with the button still pressed. (The hand tool is only enabled when the image is magnified so it does not fit on the screen.)

Example: Coordinates measured from two bee wings.
11.40 2.37  14.80 2.57  12.69 2.60  11.88 2.61  12.71 3.24  13.32 3.52  13.56 3.50  12.77 4.18
10.71 6.24  14.13 6.70  12.03 6.58  11.16 6.48  12.10 7.25  12.51 7.50  12.73 7.49  11.89 8.11
Note: The decimal separator used above is that of your Windows/Settings/Regional options/Decimal symbol to make the data compatible with your spread sheet program.

When registering coordinates from a tree sample, there is (normally) only one coordinate pair to register for each ring border. The registered coordinates are written to rows in a file like this:
206.26,6.15
205.74,6.03
205.28,5.88

There are basically two recording modes in CooRecorder:

or a group of coordinate pairs for each written row of data to the file (data group mode):

If you are using the data group mode you have to click the End of data group button before you start recording the next group of coordinate pairs:

End of data group button

If necessary, you may switch between  these two modes while recording. For fast switching, you can click the right button on your mouse to do this.
You may use the Enter key as a substitute for the End of data group button.

Note:Below the magnifying glass tool, there is a small frame showing current coordinates in millimetres. The number of decimals shown are the same as the number of decimals written to the rows of the data file. This can be changed through the menu command Settings/Other settings.

There are a number of buttons for editing what you have recorded:

A select button to select a certain point.
Click on the Select button, then click on the proper point. When a point is selected the editing buttons will be enabled. They are otherwise dimmed. They are shown enabled above, because a point not shown on the picture was selected.
You may use the S key on your keyboard to make the Select button click!

A replace button.
First select a point. Then click on the replace button. Finally click at the new registration point in your image. This will move the selected point. The R key makes the Replace button click!

There is a delete button - the black cross.
This button will delete the currently selected point. If this point is part of a group, the whole group will be deleted. This is done so because deleting a point inside a group will probably make the order among the remaining points unclear. If you want to change some data within the group, either use the replace button to move individual points or use the delete button and then reregister the whole group.

There is a disable button - the red cross.
This button is used to disable single datapoints. When they are later written onto the file a "D" will be written directly in front of the numeric coordinate pair. This is usable for dendrochronological data, where some visible tree-rings are not actual year rings. You may want to register such an unclear point though you want to have the coordinate pair disabled until you know more about the sample. You can open the coordinate file later, select the disabled point and then click again on the disable button to enable the point.

There is also a start point button.
Normally the first coordinate you click when recording is also the first coordinate to be written to your file. Though when working with dendrochronological data you may want to register some extra points later. Or you want to delete the original first coordinate pair from your data set. Then it may be appropriate to indicate which point is the very first point of your data set. This button is only enabled when you are working in dendro mode and when you have also selected a point with the Select button (the button with the big arrow).

There are three output formats: Raw data, Sorted data and Dendro with seasonwood.

When you open an image file, you also have to decide which output format to use. Anyhow you may change your choice with the "Set DPI and data-type" button.

Raw data is what you would suppose it to be: Data taken from your first registration point and forwards until your last registration point. This mode will ignore any start point settings. Here is again the example from two bee wings:
11.40 2.37  14.80 2.57  12.69 2.60  11.88 2.61  12.71 3.24  13.32 3.52  13.56 3.50  12.77 4.18
10.71 6.24  14.13 6.70  12.03 6.58  11.16 6.48  12.10 7.25  12.51 7.50  12.73 7.49  11.89 8.11

Dendro data or sorted data is written from the starting point which you may redefine with the Start Point button. Then the next point written is that which is nearest to the start point. Then the point nearest to that point until there are no more points. In dendro mode, coordinates are always written with decimal POINTs and with a comma between the x- and y-coordinates, like
108.16,6.03
107.97,6.04
107.48,6.06

Note: If that format is not what you want to import into a spread-sheet-program, you can always select the raw format before writing out your coordinates:
108.16 6.03
107.97 6.04
107.48 6.06

Dendro Seasonwood data is a bit more special. When you need to know more about that format, please look into a file of that type.