Camera is stuck every few seconds

[Igal_S_]

Hello,

I just got the F200 camera and installed the SDK.

I tried to run several examples from the sample browser. All example seems to work fine, but every few second the camera is getting stuck.

I can see that the laser is turned off (Red light is turned off). Sometimes the example is getting complelty stuck and need to be forced down, or sometimes it recovers itself after 30 seconds or so.

I am running on a Intel i5-4200 1.6Ghz, 8GB ram, Windows 8.1 64bit

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Igal

[MartyG]

The first thing I would suggest trying is going into the power-saving plans in the Windows control panel and setting them to "Never" (i.e don't go into power-saving mode after a certain amount of time has passed).  This is because Windows 8.1 has a power-saving feature where it will reduce the power supplied to the USB ports after a certain period of time unless the user does something that Windows recognizes as "activity", such as pushing a keyboard key or moving the mouse.

I found recently when I was testing this principle that Windows 8.1 does not count RealSense camera inputs as a form of activity.  So if a power-saving plan is set, it will go into that mode after the duration of time defined in the power settings even if you are constantly waving your hands in front of the camera whilst using a sample.

Edit: I took a snapshot of my power settings.  

http://sambiglyon.org/sites/default/files/powersettings.jpg

In it, I selected the 'Advanced' power settings link and then scrolled down the list of advanced settings into I got to the USB one.  I clicked on the '+' sign beside it to expand it open until I was given the option to change the default 'Enabled' status of the setting to 'Disabled.  

[Igal_S_]

I changed the settings - and issue remains the same.

It seems that after first booting the computer the camera works for more time (2-3 minute). This time I noticed that when it got stuck the red laser was still on and the application froze. In the next attempts the camera got shut down every few seconds (laser is off) and started working again by its own after few more seconds.

I run the 'Emotion Viewer' application and when switching to the internal laptop camera - it worked just fine. After switching back to the Realsense camera - it got stuck again.

I suspect some hardware issue. I let the Realsense to cool off for few minutes and tried again - still same issue.

[MartyG]

A few of the camera functions such as emotion sensing only need the functions that ordinary webcams have.  The majority of SDK features require the RealSense specialist hardware.  This would explain why the emotion sample worked with your laptop webcam whilst the other samples did not.

Still, the fact that the emotion program was not working with the RealSense camera - which is capable of acting like an ordinary webcam - suggests that some other factor is at work here.

Some people who have had cut-out problems with the camera have reported that their problem was solved after plugging their camera into an external USB 3.0 powered hub (which supplies power to the USB devices instead of them drawing power from the computer.)  Officially, hubs are not supposed to work with the camera and the Intel guidelines recommend that the camera has to be plugged directly into a computer port.  Despite this, a hub has been the solution for some people's camera on-off-on-off problems though.

[Vidyasagar_MSC]

Can you check the memory usage on your PC? Also on the task manager check which process is eating away the memory. 

[Igal_S_]

The memory usage was around 2G (25%) and also the CPU never got above 50% - so I don't think it is the issue.

Also - the fact that is working just fine with the internal camera suggests that it is not the software itself, but more of hardware or driver issue.

I still haven't try the USB hub. I need to get my hands on one and I will try it.

[AndreCarlucci]

Hi Igal,

Could you try the same example with the same camera on another machine and report back here if it works?

[Vidyasagar_MSC]

If it doesn't work. Try USB hub, as it works in most of the cases. Pls. keep us posted

[Igal_S_]

I only have one laptop running Windows 8, so it is the only one I test on.

Others run Windows 7, which as I understand is not supported by the SDK. So I didn't even tried it.

I got USB 3 Hub, which apperantly is not supported correctly by Windows 8, and the camera is not detected correctly at all. Device manager is  refreshing all the time, and does not stablize.

I have found that the "IQ Sample Tool" allows a different camera configuration, when running on 640x240 the camera was much more stable, and I manage to run the sample for 30 minutes or so. But this morning, same settings got stuck again.

[Marios_B_]

Hi there!

I have the same issue although I did not in the past.

When I use my laptops USB ports depth camera works randomly.When I tried a hub(not powered) it worked but lags just like you said(turns on and off).I am thinking of using a powered hub to check results.If you find any other solution please let me know!