RealSense with Single-board-computer

[Steve_P_]

Hi, 

I'd like to make a small battery-powered portable system using R200.

Could anyone help me with those questions below?

Q1)  

At first, I was thinking about Raspberry Pi 3 which has a lot of reference for developers (which is great thing compared to other boards).

But I've come into two doubts. 

    - They say RPi3 is now supported by Windows 10 IoT Core. but then is it OK with RealSense SDK? 

    - RPi3 has no USB 3.0 so I was planning to have other powered USB 3.0 port to connect RealSense to RPi. 

      http://www.buyraspberrypi.com.au/shop/4-port-usb-3-0-powered-usb-hub/

I'm wondering if with those two options I can use RPi3 with RealSense.

Q2)

There is an official development kit is for sale (starting 2016 June) on the Intel Homepage and it is with something called UP board.(Aaeon). 

http://click.intel.com/intelr-realsensetm-robotic-development-kit.html

It would be safer to use this official development kit but UP board doesn't have a lot of tests, demos. That's the risk.

Also it says it comes with Ubuntu, but as far as I know R200 SDK only supported by Windows (Android coming soon). 

Then do I need to change OS to use R200 SDK?

I'm also wondering whether Windows 10 IoT Core also available for SDK.

Q3)

On the other hand, on this Realsense Forum, I found many topics regarding Minnowboard Turbot board.

Is it because Minnowboard is the best so far? (UP board dev. kit is for sale starting from June 2016. now pre-order)

Q4) 

Actually I do not need any object recognition, tracking algorithms etc.

I will be taking a photo of static background and I'd like to know the distance to the image pixels.

All I need is the RGB Image mapped with depth data,  measurement function.

Then would I need SDK or just librealsense?

My system requires, 

Acceleration sensor (GPIO) / Bluetooth connection with Smartphone. 

Thank you in advance.

Regards,

[samontab]

Q1) You can't use RealSense cameras with Raspberry Pi 1, 2, or 3. Mainly because of the lack of USB3 ports. Given that RealSense is not going towards USB2, and Raspberry Pi is not going towards USB3, I would just discard this idea.

Q2) That custom Intel board is fine, but doesn't have anything special to be honest. I think it's better just to use whatever hardware is best for your application, which may or may not be that one.

Q3) Well, the Minnowboard is pretty good for some projects. For me, the biggest feature is that its CPU architecture is x86-64, which basically is the same as a normal desktop or laptop, instead of the typical small computing boards like the Raspberry Pi and similar, which feature an ARM based CPU. This means that your development is exactly the same in your laptop, desktop, and this embedded board. No cross compiling, etc.

Having said that, I also own quite a lot of ARM based boards, and they are also great for some projects. It all depends on what you want, how you work, what you know to do, etc.

You can't say something is the best without having a metric.

Q4) Librealsense will give you that. You don't need the RealSense SDK.

[Chi_T_]

Last week, I got an UP board with 64 GB of eMMC and had managed to get Windows 10 (1067) on it OK (https://youtu.be/fIhT61Vlq-M).

Today after some struggles as shown below, I got the R-200 to work (somewhat), see steps below:

1) Got all equipment hooked up with no power.
2) Power on and UP board went into Windows normally.
3) Then could hear the usual beeps while Device Manager detected the R-200 and tried to install the drivers for it.
4) Device Manager then showed 4 working Intel devices inside "Imaging Devices": AVStream, Depth, Left-Right and RGB. (R200DeviceDriver.png).

5) But DCM would not install properly (DCMFailedToInstall.png).

6) Started to see system notifications that "Last USB device not working". Went back into Device Manager and uninstall all R-200 related drivers including all hidden related USB devices. Uninstall DCM tool also.

7) Powered down and rebooted.
8) Now see only 3 Intel devices in "Imaging Devices": Depth, Left-Right, RGB and and "ISP camera" inside "Other devices" (DeviceManagerAfterPowerReset4.PNG).

9) But now DCM installed properly and SDK also.

10) The "CameraExplorer" tool worked OK (CameraExplorerOK_3.PNG).

11) Got some results (R-200_1.png)

although "depth image" is poor. But this application locked itself up after around 30 s. or so. Had to reboot everything to get the system working again. Wondering if this got anything to do with that missing AVStream device?  Or with the BIOS of the UP board?

I used the same setup on a DELL XPS desktop and had no problem at all and never saw AVStream Camera device on the Dell.

Has anyone run across similar issues?

Many thanks

[MartyG]

It's worth mentioning that Intel has its own official mini-board for RealSense coming called Joule.  The news report suggests that it is coming "soon" to Intel's online store, with retailers getting it "later" in September.  Since Joule isn't in the store yet, it's probably more likely to be in the online store in September now, simultaneously releasing at the same time as retail stocks.

https://www.engadget.com/2016/08/16/intels-joule-is-its-most-powerful-dev-kit-yet/

The article says it is being used by a French company in police motorcycle helmets, which strongly suggests it can be battery-powered.

[Alex_P_5]

Well, the Minnowboard is pretty good for some projects. For me, the biggest feature is that its CPU architecture is x86-64, which basically is the same as a normal desktop or laptop, instead of the typical small computing boards like the embedded single board computer and similar, which feature an ARM based CPU. This means that your development is exactly the same in your laptop, desktop, and this embedded board. No cross compiling, etc. Having said that, I also own quite a lot of ARM based boards, and they are also great for some projects. It all depends on what you want, how you work, what you know to do, etc. You can't say something is the best without having a metric.