Unable to use RGB camera on Astra with OpenCV2

Technical Support & Q&A
1

I’m attempting to access the RGB feed of the Orbbec Astra camera on Ubuntu 22.04. However, when following the tutorial [link: OpenCV: Using Orbbec Astra 3D cameras], the camera does not connect to /dev/video0 as expected. It appears that the Astra camera is not being recognized as a webcam.

I am able to connect to the depth sensor using cv2.VideoCapture(CAP_OPENNI2_ASTRA). However, when I attempt to use cv2.VideoCapture(0, CAP_V4L2) I get the following error:
[ WARN:0@0.005] global cap_v4l.cpp:997 open VIDEOIO(V4L2:/dev/video0): can't open camera by index [ WARN:0@0.005] global cap.cpp:342 open VIDEOIO(V4L2): backend is generally available but can't be used to capture by index

I do need the RGB image as well for a project that I’m working on, so any advice on getting it working would be greatly appreciated.

2

What is the camera type? Could you share the SN?

3

It is an Astra.
S/N: AAD1433006Z

4

The tutorial is for Astra Pro, not Astra. The different is the RGB on astra is not an UVC sensor, it is OpenNI sensor. So you could use OpenNI SDK from orbbec. OpenNI SDK - ORBBEC - 3D Vision for a 3D World