M0040 Time of Flight sensor FPS

Darshit Desai

@Moderator I found a way to increase FPS from older posts, Is there a way to increase FPS more then 15 for the ToF camera as in the data sheet it still says the FPS can go upto 45 Hz. I want to increase till atleast 25 Hz and if the CPU still has some power left upto 30 Hz. But when i do that the camera server has an error saying it can either take 5 or 15 FPS.

Moderator

@Darshit-Desai No, there is not currently a way to increase to 30FPS. We will take it into consideration for the future

Darshit Desai

@Moderator Is it because of the CPU computation constraints or is it because of the sensor itself? If it's because of the sensor, will upgrading my current ToF to the new next-gen ToF sensor make a difference?

Alex Kushleyev

@Darshit-Desai , the limitation is coming from the current camera server configuration, not from the sensor itself. I discussed this with the team and we will try to add more mode options for TOF sensors in short term. We need to do a bit more investigation before we can provide ETA. The change should be relatively small, hopefully will have good news later this week.

Alex

Darshit Desai

@Alex-Kushleyev Wow, thats really good news.

I was just starting to test a constant velocity interpolation model (Kalman filter type) for increasing the frame rate of the ToF and hopefully match it with the Neural net Detection frame rate for my tracking task. (Artificially and highly inaccurate for non linear drone movements). This natural increase in frame rate from the sensor itself would be much better for my project

Alex Kushleyev

@Darshit-Desai , can you please let me know which version of voxl-camera-server you are using now?

Darshit Desai

@Alex-Kushleyev Is the command to check the voxl-camera-server voxl-camera-server --version?

Just wanted to inform you that I am using VOXL SDK 1.1.2, which is the latest release on this website. Probably the version would be the one coupled with the latest SDK update. I haven't made any changes to the voxl-camera-server on top of the updated SDK.

Alex Kushleyev

@Darshit-Desai you can see by running voxl-version , it will print versions of all voxl packages

Darshit Desai

@Alex-Kushleyev Here's the version details of all packages, the camera-server version is 1.8.9

Alex Kushleyev

@Darshit-Desai OK, great so the version is 1.8.9 which came from skd-1.1.2.

I will experiment using that version so that you can test it directly. The latest dev version of voxl-camera-server on gitlab has some updates for the new TOF sensor and it's not yet officially "released".

Darshit Desai

@Alex-Kushleyev Thank you, but if I build and deploy the dev branch code, will that show the same error as shown in this post,

I was trying to find that error message in the code repo of voxl-camera-server but I didn't find this specific error line,

@Darshit-Desai said in M0040 Time of Flight sensor FPS:

@Moderator I found a way to increase FPS from older posts, Is there a way to increase FPS more then 15 for the ToF camera as in the data sheet it still says the FPS can go upto 45 Hz. I want to increase till atleast 25 Hz and if the CPU still has some power left upto 30 Hz. But when i do that the camera server has an error saying it can either take 5 or 15 FPS.

Alex Kushleyev

@Darshit-Desai the error is here : https://gitlab.com/voxl-public/voxl-sdk/services/voxl-camera-server/-/blob/dev/src/hal3_camera_mgr.cpp#L561

But you can't just modify the check condition. In order to switch to a higher FPS than 15Hz, the sensor needs to use a medium or short range mode (currently long range mode). So a few other things need to change.

So do you want me to use dev version or sdk 1.1.2 version as starting point? It may be easier for you, since everything will remain the same (no other changes in camera server).

this change will (eventually) make it to dev anyway, i could go directly to dev (in fact it will be simpler for me), but i am offering you a choice

Darshit Desai

@Alex-Kushleyev Presently I only require a bump in the FPS, so I suggest you do changes by taking sdk1.1.2 as the base. If you use the dev version there might be unaccounted bugs which I don't want in my build

Alex Kushleyev

@Darshit-Desai , yes that is exactly my thought. i will use sdk1.1.2 as the base.

Alex Kushleyev

@Darshit-Desai , to my own surprise, this was quick. I was able to test at 30, 45 and 60fps all of which will use the short range mode of the sensor. I have done minimal testing, but the depth, confidence and Ir images look good in voxl-portal

https://gitlab.com/voxl-public/voxl-sdk/services/voxl-camera-server/-/tree/sdk1.1.2-add-tof-fps-options

Just build voxl camera server from this branch, make package, install package on voxl2 and update your fps parameter from 15 to either 30, 45, 60 in voxl-camera-server.conf

Let me know how it goes!

Darshit Desai

@Alex-Kushleyev Thank you I am trying this out right now, Which option should I choose here for repo version

Also when I do git branch after cloning the repo it only shows master branch I had to manually write the branch name

Alex Kushleyev

@Darshit-Desai ,

git branch -a shows all the branches

for installing deps, use sdk-1.1 since we based this branch off sdk-1.1.2

Alex

Darshit Desai

@Alex-Kushleyev Thanks it worked it shows point cloud at 30 FPS when I set it to 30 in .conf file

I will try it out with other services like mpatoros2, tfliteserver in tandem see if there is a drop in frame rate or performance

Darshit Desai

@Alex-Kushleyev right now the FPS values need to be a multiple of 15 for some reason because I tried 35, and 20 FPS and the camera server refuses to start

Alex Kushleyev

@Darshit-Desai , i will double check the available FPS. Not all arbitrary FPS are possible.