[omalleyj]

The lower level stuff is called from Java by methods that are just wrappers for the call to the real functions (ala what JNI gives you) which I assume are written in C or LabView and are sitting in a .so somewhere. If you look in the NIVision class you will see what I mean, for instance MeasureParticle calls imaqMeasureParticle. I am not sure what is available in LabView so I don't know what percentage of functionality is exposed to Java, but everything to do ball detection is certainly there, and you can use the higher level methods in ColorImage and MonoImage.

<ideasrule>
I don't see any particle filter, thresholding functionality, or shape detection (except for ellipse detect) functionality. Where are they?

Not sure exactly what you are looking for here, the particle reports in the demo are filtered by user written code that compares the information returned to what is expected and generates a number that is compared to a threshold value. But I don't get the feeling that is what you mean.

Are you looking to detect the edges yourself?