[Megathread] Newbie FAQs (Astra PRO)

Developer Resources Getting Started
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Like many others I was using the Kinect V2 sensor for many gesture detection projects. Since the Kinect V2 sensor is sunsetting, we’re currently evaluating the Orbbec Astra Pro.

Below are some newbie/ex-Kinect-user FAQs and links to resources & answers. These are the types of things not covered in the official docs & likely be asked by other newcomers so if anyone has answers/insights to these questions please reply below and perhaps this megathread can be of use to others.

[MacOS] Why don’t the color samples from the SDK work?

See: Color stream issue on Astra Pro under Mac OSX - #2 by mattfelsen

The SimpleDepthViewer-SFML sample should work but MultiSensorViewer-SFML and SimpleColorViewer-SFML will be a blank screen. The reason for this is because “The color stream on the Astra Pro camera is only accessible via UVC (like a webcam) rather than through the Astra SDK.” Right now the SDK doesn’t support UVC RGB color camera so if you require colorstreams, use tools that exist for webcams (ex opencv)

While the color stream samples will fail, you can confirm the sensor is working correctly and by opening Photo Booth and see a color stream from the point of view of the sensor.

Gesture Detection: How to do gesture detection with the sensor? From Kinect, what is the equivalent of Visual Gesture Builder?

There isn’t one.

Orbbec has a bodytracking SDK but not gesture detection.

See here: Recommendations for hand gesture tracking - #2 by wtatters

Two options that pop-up over and over:

YMMV depending on which one you choose, see here for a preliminary breakdown of Gestoos vs Nuitrack vs Orbbec Body Tracking (OBT): Body Tracking NOT FREE after January 31, 2018? - #11 by vicalg2018

OpenNI: Does Orbbec maintain a fork of OpenNI2?

See: Understanding the relationship of OpenNI and Astra SDK

See: Mainstream OpenNI support for Orbbec cameras - #2 by james_ashley

Not really-- the Astra SDK relies on OpenNI. Evidently the changes involve: (1) internal performance tweaks, (2) adding the astra driver to the openNI build process and (3) making changes for OpenNI2 to build for Android devices using Astra drivers

Important downloads & resources:

Besides the SDK samples folder, are there any interesting complete sample applications?

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