easyWand6 manual
easyWand6 online manual, authored by Ty Hedrick, last revised 2025-07-15
easyWand6 github repository and MATLAB App installer
easyWand6 is a the modern heir to easyWand5, a MATLAB-based graphical interface for getting stereo or multi-camera calibrations to enable videographic measurement of 3D coordinates and volumes.easyWand6 is particularly aimed at researchers using multi-camera videography to make measurements outdoors, where relative camera placement and orientation may be difficult to directly measure, but it is also useful in laboratory contexts due to the flexibility of input types and scene alignment options. In comparison to easyWand5, easyWand6 is compatible with current MATLAB versions, supports an expanded range of options for setting the scene scale and orientation, and assumes an image coordinate origin in the upper left corner.
easyWand6 outputs calibrations compatible with DLTdv8, but also makes the optimized camera intrinsic and extrinsic parameters available as exported MATLAB workspace variables or in the saved project data files.
easyWand6 uses the open source sparse bundle adjustment routines “sba” described in [Lourakis and Argyros (2009)] as the internal calibration engine, implemented in the MATLAB mex function easySBA. These optimized C/C++ routines allow for rapid and accurate camera calibration with many thousands of data points and tens of cameras on modern desktop computing hardware.
easyWand6 also uses the “efficient PnP” routine described in [Lepetit, V., Moreno-Noguer, F., & Fua, P. (2009)] when performing a second-pass bundle adjustment calibration. Source code for easySBA and “efficient PnP” is included in the easyWand6 distribution.
Since easyWand6 is the direct descendant of easyWand5 and was motivated by the difficulty of getting easyWand5 to work in the MATLAB r2025a graphics engine, please cite the following paper in any published research that was enabled by easyWand6:
This manual is mostly a series of video tutorials and associated sample data, summarized in the table of contents below. Many of the tutorials reference test case data available for download here.
Table of contents
Calibration with a wand length and 4-point alignment axis
Two-camera field calibration with azimuth and elevation alignment
A 3-camera field calibration, start to finish
Scene alignment options
Optimizing camera intrinsic parameters with easyWand6