Faq

Hardware #

Does the Kea camera have Depth/RGB Sync? #

The Kea camera has Depth/RGB syncing. However, it’s important to note that the depth and RGB streams are not hardware synchronized. The currently used RGB module does not have a hardware trigger. Instead, the synchronization between depth and RGB data is achieved through software. As a result, there can be a potential time difference of up to ~33.3ms between the depth and RGB data.

Does the Kea camera support Hardware Synchronization? #

The Kea camera supports both hardware and software triggers. On the GPIO header, one pin is used to trigger and one is used as a trigger out, so multiple cameras can be chained together.

Can a multi-camera setup be built using the Kea camera? #

Yes, the Kea camera allows for a multi-camera setup. The reason indirect time-of-flight cameras don’t work well together is that they interfere with each other’s measurements. However, with the Kea camera, you can select slightly different modulation frequencies to avoid interference between cameras.

Is it possible to get closer than 0.4m? #

Yes and no. With a default Kea camera, you can get closer than 0.4 meters, but you will run into problems. Firstly, the lens will not be focused clearly at such a close distance, resulting in a blurry depth image for objects in close proximity. Secondly, the calibration will be slightly off since you would have to use a very low integration time. On request, we can deliver a camera that is focussed to a shorter range with a calibration done for a low integration time.

Would the Kea camera work through/in water? #

No, at the wavelength the Kea camera operates (940 nm), most or all of the emitted light would be absorbed by the water.

Software #

Viewer/SDK crash at startup on Windows #

This is most likely an issue if you have another installation of libusb. To check if this is the problem, follow these steps:

• Open an instance of PowerShell.
• Set the path to only include the TOF installation: $Env:PATH="C:\Program Files\tof\bin"
• Run the viewer: viewer.exe

If this is the issue, make sure that the TOF path is at the top, or repeat the above process every time you want to run a program requiring the TOF library.

Error occurred: packet size issue #

When the camera throws an error with the following message: Could not establish gige connection with camera, packets with minimum packet size (576) are being dropped it could have several reasons.

The most likely reason is that the firewall is enabled, preventing the camera from streaming depth data to the host computer. Another possible reason is that data is being streamed over Wi-Fi, this usually doesn’t work too well. Make sure you are connected to the camera over Ethernet. Finally, some ethernet dongles are pretty bad, so that could be the issue too.