Color stream issue on Astra Pro under Mac OSX

[haimingw24]

Hi,

I have troubles getting the color stream working in my Astra Pro. I downloaded the AstraSDK-0.5.0-20160426T102621Z-darwin-x64 to my Mac, then based on the ReadMe file to build the sample. Then the samples is compiled into samples/build/bin/ . There are SimpleDepthViewer, SimpleStreamViewer, SimpleColorViewer… Only SimpleDepthViewer works correctly, however, both SimpleStreamViewer and SimpleColorViewer show a black screen. Did anybody have this issue before? Can anybody help me for this problem? Thanks.

[mattfelsen]

The color stream on the Astra Pro camera is only accessible via UVC (like a webcam) rather than through the Astra SDK.

See this thread for some more background on the issue:

Color Image Not Firing On Frame Event

Based upon your comment that you can view the live color stream in Photo Booth, I am guessing that you have an Astra Pro sensor, which exposes the color stream via UVC (like a standard webcam). This is in contrast to Astra and other OpenNI-like cameras which only expose color via an SDK. See threads like: for more on the UVC color camera and differences between Astra and Astra Pro. Also, some sample code about accessing Astra Pro color: We will be releasing an update to the Astra SDK tha…

And this thread has some sample code for using OpenCV to access the data:

AStra Pro Color image

Hello I have been trying to get the color image stream from the Astra pro. According to other posts: compatibility-astra-pro-and-openni2 problem-with-rgb-camera-on-astra-pro the RGB image of the Astra pro can not be accessed neither via the SDK nor with OpenNI… has someone been able to do it in some way? or is the camera of the sensor “useless” until we get the support for the Astra SDK? I’m feeling kind of disappointed right now… Thnx

Alternatively, if you happen to be familiar with using openFrameworks, I’ve written an addon which works with both Astra & Astra cameras:

GitHub - mattfelsen/ofxOrbbecAstra: openFrameworks addon for using the Orbbec...

[haimingw24]

Thank you so much. But I still don’t understand how to use UVC in Mac OXS system? Do we need to download UVC, and compile something within UVC package?

[mattfelsen]

No, nothing to install…I don’t understand much about UVC either but I think it’s just a standardized way of talking to cameras over USB. If you’re able to see the Astra Pro in apps like Photo Booth, Skype, Hangouts, etc then it should be working properly.

[haimingw24]

Mattfelsen,

Thanks. Actually I want to use Astra Pro on the TurtleBot robot system. Based on the color and depth information, I would like to use some algorithms to make it automatically driving. So I want the color and depth stream are compiled. Just like in your SDK.

[mattfelsen]

I think using OpenCV with ROS is fairly common, so you should be able to edit the source to do what you want. The OpenCV sample I linked to above should help you. Good luck!

[haimingw24]

Hi Mattfelsen,

Thank you so much. So far I still cannot obtain the color information by using OpenCV or OpenNI. I will hold on this thing. I am a vey beginner to use the 3D camera, so a lot of things need to be learned. Could you tell how can I retrieve the depth data to control the TurtleBot robots? Is there some interface? How to output the depth data to external hardware? Thanks.

[mattfelsen]

Sorry, I haven’t used the TurtleBot or ROS before so I don’t know how to do that either!

[sharmagarv]

Hi, I am also facing color stream issue but on Persee and I am using OpenNI on Linux-Arm.
Any fix for my case? Or OpenNI simply does not work with color stream?
Does any update of OpenNI2, as here, given by developers here, suport color stream viewing?