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Software support model

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Overview

With the release of Intel® RealSense™ D400 serie 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 Intel RealSense devices: F200, R200 and ZR300.
  • librealsense 2+ will support the next generation of Intel RealSense devices, starting with the RS300 and RS400.

API Changes

librealsense2 brings the following improvements and new capabilities (which are incompatible with older RealSense devices):

Streaming API

librealsense2 provides a more flexible interface for frame acquisition.
Instead of a single wait_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 a rs::frame object to a background thread. This is done without copying the frame data and without extra dynamic allocations.

Multi-Streaming Model

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) {});

New Functionality

  • 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.

Transition to CMake

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.

Intel® RealSense™ RS400 and the Linux Kernel

  • 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.

Updated almost 2 years ago