With the release of the D400 series of Intel® RealSense™ devices, Intel RealSense Group is introducing a number of changes to the librealsense support.
Software support for Intel® RealSense™ technology will be split into two coexisting release lineups: librealsense 1.x and librealsense 2+.
-
librealsense 1.x will continue to provide support for RealSense™ devices: F200, R200 and ZR300.
-
librealsense 2+ will support the next generation of RealSense™ devices, starting with the RS300 and RS400.
librealsense2 brings the following improvements and new capabilities (which are incompatible with older RealSense devices):
- librealsense2 provides a more flexible interface for frame acquisition.
Instead of a singlewait_for_frames
loop, the API is based on callbacks and queues:
// Configure queue of size one and start streaming frames into it
rs2::frame_queue queue(1);
dev.start(queue);
// This call will block the current thread until new frames become available
auto frame = queue.wait_for_frame();
auto pixels = frame.get_data(); // pointer to frame data
- The same API can be used in a slightly different way for low-latency applications:
// Configure direct callback for new frames:
dev.start([](rs2::frame frame){
auto pixels = frame.get_data(); // pointer to frame data
});
// The application will be notified as soon as new frames become available.
Note: This approach allows users to bypass the buffering and synchronization that was done by wait_for_frames
.
- Users who do need to synchronize between different streams can take advantage of the
rs2::syncer
class:
sycner sync;
dev.start(sync);
// The following call, using the frame timestamp, will block the
// current thread until the next coherent set of frames become available
auto frames = sync.wait_for_frames();
for (auto&& frame : frames)
{
auto pixels = frame.get_data(); // pointer to frame data
}
- This version of
wait_for_frames
is thread-safe by design. You can safely pass ars::frame
object to a background thread. This is done without copying the frame data and without extra dynamic allocations.
librealsense2 eliminates limitations imposed by previous versions with regard to multi-streaming:
- Multiple applications can use librealsense2 simultaneously, as long as no two users try to stream from the same camera endpoint.
In practice, this means that you can:- Stream multiple cameras within a single process
- Stream from camera A in one process and from camera B in another process
- Stream depth from camera A in one process while streaming fisheye / motion from the same camera in another process
- Stream from camera A in one process while issuing controls to camera A from another process
- The following streams of the RS400 act as independent endpoints: Depth, Fisheye, Motion-tracking, Color
- Each endpoint can be exclusively locked using
open/close
methods:
// Configure depth to run at first permitted configuration
dev.open(dev.get_stream_profiles().front());
// From this point on, device streaming is exclusively locked.
dev.close(); // Release device ownership
- Alternatively, users can use the
rs2::util::config
helper class to configure multiple endpoints at once:
rs2::util::config config;
// Declare your preferences
config.enable_all(rs2::preset::best_quality);
// The config object resolves them into concrete capabilities for the supplied camera
auto stream = config.open(dev);
stream.start([](rs2::frame) {});
- librealsense2 will be shipped with a built-in Python Wrapper for easier integration.
- New troubleshooting tools are now part of the package, including a tool for hardware log collection.
- librealsense2 is capable of handling device disconnects and the discovery of new devices at runtime.
- Playback & Record functionality is available out-of-the-box.
librealsense2 does not provide hand-written Visual Studio, QT-Creator and XCode project files as you can build librealsense with the IDE of your choice using portable CMake scripts.
- The Intel® RealSense™ RS400 series (starting with kernel 4.4.0.59) does not require any kernel patches for streaming
- Advanced camera features may still require kernel patches. Currently, getting hardware timestamps is dependent on a patch that has not yet been up-streamed. Without the patch applied you can still use the camera but you will receive a system-time instead of an optical timestamp.