difference between generation of infrared stream & depth stream

[PARIKSHIT_S_]

what is the difference between generation of infrared stream & depth stream? 

[samontab]

Infrared stream is just the raw data coming from the infrared camera, which is pretty much a normal camera but more sensible to IR light.

The depth stream is created internally using the infrared camera stream as input. This is the whole point of the camera, to give you this data. With it, you can get the XYZ world coordinates of the scene.

Basically the camera works like this: It projects an IR pattern to the scene, and then it reads that with the IR camera. Depth information is calculated internally and given to you in the depth stream.

You may not need the IR stream in your app, but since it is already there, it does not hurt to offer you more data. You could for example use it for stereo applications, by matching the IR camera with the RGB camera, or you could just ignore it. I reckon most regular applications will only use the depth and the color streams.

[Granger_L_]

samontab wrote:

Infrared stream is just the raw data coming from the infrared camera, which is pretty much a normal camera but more sensible to IR light.

The depth stream is created internally using the infrared camera stream as input. This is the whole point of the camera, to give you this data. With it, you can get the XYZ world coordinates of the scene.

Basically the camera works like this: It projects an IR pattern to the scene, and then it reads that with the IR camera. Depth information is calculated internally and given to you in the depth stream.

You may not need the IR stream in your app, but since it is already there, it does not hurt to offer you more data. You could for example use it for stereo applications, by matching the IR camera with the RGB camera, or you could just ignore it. I reckon most regular applications will only use the depth and the color streams.

Old post, but thanks for the explanation, samontab. I'm really glad I found this. On a related note, do you happen to know what data type the raw IR data holds? I'm trying to display an IR stream using opencv, but I'm most types I've tried seemed to have failed, such as CV_8U, CV_8S, CV_16U and CV_16S. 

[samontab]

Here's a video tutorial I did about getting access to the raw data streams of the F200, it may be of help to you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIkIdjN6Oyw