So after ordering the Pi2 I ran across a very nice walk through on getting OpenCV up and working on the Pi2 and the Pi1.
Click here for the gory details.
It’s a bit to read through, but after reading it switching to OpenCV is the only way to go. Sure it takes about 12 fucking hours to compile on a Pi (whut? much quicker on a pi2), and using OpenCV increases the complexity of the code a bit, but holy shit, it runs fast.
Adrian over 
at pyimagesearch is getting 32FPS with facial detection on the Pi 2. Kickass. Going to the trouble of getting it working on a Pi1 seems like an unnecessary exercise in self flagellation so I’ll probably just wait for the new pi.
It got me thinking though, with that kind upfront cost getting the software going wouldn’t it be faster (and more edifying) just to figure out how to do it in a VM? I could fire up the latest pi image in a vm and crush the bits on my desktop…
http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=5743
http://cronicasredux.blogspot.com/2011/09/installing-and-running-debian-armel-on.html
http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/344/emulation-on-a-windows-pc
…and it actually doesn’t seem too god-awful. (the links are for getting this going in windows).
Famous last words.
With any luck the Pi will be here today and I can skip the unnecessary flagellation. The scrotal flagellation shall continue however.
Now that I’ve got some directions on getting the Pi software going in a VM, I’m just too damned curious to not try it out. It could be very handy in the future. You know, build up a custom Pi image on something with horsepower, then image it off to an SD card. We’ll see, we’ll see.
brokendesk 
Man this blog post was awesome. It definitely put a smile on my face 🙂 I’m glad PyImageSearch could help out. Cheers mate.
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And as a followup, I plan on creating a downloadable Computer Vision + OPenCV Raspbian install that you can just flash to your SD card. No need to waste 12 hours on the install. But more on that to come…
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Sweet, that’s music to my ears. How were you going to go about it?
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I’m still trying to figure that one out! But I think the general process will be to basically create a fresh new install of Raspbian, setup OpenCV, and then clone the micro-SD card back to my system.
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I don’t know how well this would work (or how portable it’d be between devices), but this sounds like a sane starting point: http://lifehacker.com/how-to-clone-your-raspberry-pi-sd-card-for-super-easy-r-1261113524.
You’d want to remove any wireless settings, but it would probably still be fairly sanitary…
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Agreed, something like that article should work fairly well. I’m not too worried about the hardware, since all Raspberry Pi 2’s are the same.
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