seanavery/viam-camera-realsense

C++ camera module for the RealSense

Intel RealSense Modular Component

This is a Viam module for the Intel® RealSense™ family of cameras.

Getting Started

For Linux Distros, the simplest way of getting the camera server is by downloading the AppImage from

sudo curl -o /usr/local/bin/viam-camera-realsense http://packages.viam.com/apps/camera-servers/viam-camera-realsense-latest-aarch64.AppImage
sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/viam-camera-realsense

If you need the AppImage associated with a specific tag, replace latest in the URL with the tag version, i.e. v0.0.1.

Troubleshooting

If you get an error like "failed to set power state", or "Permission denied", you may need to install the udev rules for when the USB plugs in.

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/IntelRealSense/librealsense/7a7c2bcfbc03d45154ad63fa76b221b2bb9d228f/config/99-realsense-libusb.rules
sudo cp 99-realsense-libusb.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/ 
sudo udevadm control --reload-rules 
sudo udevadm trigger

You can also look at the official RealSense troubleshooting guide here.

The module takes advantage of faster USB ports. Use the (blue) USB 3.0 port on the Raspberry Pi for faster streaming and access to more resolution options.

Attributes and Sample Config

The attributes for the module are as follows:

• sensors (required): a list that contain the strings color and/or depth. The sensor that comes first in the list is designated the "main sensor" and will be the image that gets returned by get_image calls and what will appear in the Control tab on app.viam.
• width_px, height_px: the width and height of the output images. If the RealSense cannot produce the requested resolution, the component will fail to be built.
• little_endian_depth: a bool that specifices whether raw depth data should be encoded in a little-endian byte order. By default it is false, and encodes the raw depth data in a big-endian byte order.

{
  "components": [
    {
      "name": "myRealSense",
      "attributes": {
        "sensors": ["color","depth"],
        "width_px": 640,
        "height_px": 480,
        "little_endian_depth": false,
      },
      "namespace": "rdk",
      "type": "camera",
      "model": "viam:camera:realsense"
    }
  ],
  "modules": [
    {
      "executable_path": "/home/user/viam-camera-realsense",
      "name": "intel"
    }
  ],
}

Building The Module

You can also build it yourself using Docker and Viam canon. Use the commands

docker pull ghcr.io/viamrobotics/viam-camera-realsense:arm64
git clone https://github.com/viamrobotics/viam-camera-realsense/
cd viam-camera-realsense/
canon -arch arm64 make appimage

This will use the Docker container to compile a binary for the aarch64 architecture. The AppImage will be put in the packaging/appimages/deploy directory.

If you would like to try to gather all of the dependencies yourself and not use Docker, you will need:

• librealsense
  • git checkout and install from source.
  • be sure to use cmake flags cmake .. -DBUILD_EXAMPLES=false -DBUILD_GRAPHICAL_EXAMPLES=false -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
• libjpegturbo
• libprotobuf
• Viam C++ SDK
  • specifically libviamsdk, libviamapi, and libviam_rust_utils

then do make viam-camera-realsense to compile the binary, and make appimage to create the AppImage.