It’s official the Orbbec Femto Mega is my favourite depth camera! and thanks to the wonderful ethernet option I can access multiple camera depths feeds over a local network… and with long ethernet cable runs
But I was wondering if can I access the skeleton tracking data? as I can access that through USBC via the Kinect Azure chop (with the Mega option picked) but there isn’t an Orbbec Chop to connect to the Orbbec TOP to access this data with the ethernet only connection (unless I’m missing something?)… can this be a wee feature request?
I’m glad the cameras are working well for you. The Orbbec SDK doesn’t support skeleton tracking on its own and still relies on Microsoft’s libraries to do that part which is why it only works with the Kinect Azure nodes and there is no Orbbec CHOP.
Basically, you need to put a config file on your desktop, or alongside the toe file you are loading, which enables ethernet device searches. This will make the network devices show up in the device list of the Kinect Azure TOP so you can access them like you would a regular USB camera.
Hope that helps. Let us know if you have further questions.
Oh brilliant, that makes sense… I wouldn’t have guessed that approach! that’s a fantastic work-around to access networked Orbbec cameras, thanks so much!
Now I want to use the trick.
But:
I modified the config file and set the enumerable to true.
I put the file in the same folder as the toe file.
Now the Kinect Top behaves a little sluggish when I choose Orrbec.
However I can’t see the device in the dropdown:
The sluggishness is probably an indication that it is searching for the camera, but for some reason it isn’t finding it
When you have the config file in place, does the camera show up in the devices menu of the Orbbec TOP when you have specify IP address off? Does it show up in the device list if you use the Orbbec viewer?
I’m not sure exactly how the search works, but I wonder if there could be a firewall or network device blocking it.
I’ll chime in here… I’ve just got off a big immersive installation using two Femto Megas for tracking and I noticed that they they are sluggish / unreliable over long Ethernet runs… ie 80 metres… 50 metres max was optimal for my application… not sure if that’s a factor for you
Mmh strange. I’m using a really short Lan cable for testing here.
I think it’s just my approach with that config file?
It’s in the same folder as the toe file with the modified enum thing.
I didn’t change anything else.
Do I need to do something with that wrapper?
I tried to overwrite the dlls for kinect in the TD folder, but that broke the Kinect Top to “can’t find library, please install blabla…”
We’re using a custom version of the k4a.dll to allow for switching between native kinects and the orbbec, so swapping that out will definitely cause other problems.
Do you know the firmware version of your Femto Mega? The original versions of that camera did not support network searches unless you do a firmware update.
Have you had a chance to try the external Orbbec viewer app? I’d be curious to see whether it could find the camera over the network to eliminate whether this is a touchdesigner problem or not. The viewer is available in the assets section on their sdk page: Releases · orbbec/OrbbecSDK · GitHub
I could even see the femto mega in the orbbec top when it was connected via network. So it can be found and used in the orbbec top. See images above. But we need Kinect body tracking.
So just to be super clear/safe: I don’t have to switch out the DLL? Correct? I only need the xml?
Might take a few days to check. I’ll get back here!
Thx rob!
You don’t need to switch any DLLs to get it working. That could be done as a hack for older versions of TouchDesigner before we added support for Orbbec, but it will just break things now.
Regarding the Orbbec TOP, I had just been wondering if you could see it in the Device menu without entering an IP address or using a USB cabcle.
One other idea: you could also set the TOUCH_TEXT_CONSOLE environment variable to 1 which will open a separate console window when you start touch. The Orbbec SDK will print a bunch of extra debug information to that window that may give us more information to work with. I know it shows the working directory which is also the location where it expects the xml file to be.
I had the Gateway on the Orbbec set to 0.0.0.0 before.
Now I set it to my Router like so:
And it just started working!
So for everybody with the same issue:
0.0.0.0 as gateway apperently makes the camera undiscoverable?
Sorry if that’s obvious. Network stuff is a blindspot of mine…
The config file needs to be in the same location as the toe file you are loading. When opening an empty instance of TouchDesigner this will be the desktop, but otherwise you should put the config file in the same folder as your project toe file.
Sorry, I misunderstood what you were asking. The example configuration file is included in the K4A Wrapper SDK from Orbbec. You can download that here: Releases · orbbec/OrbbecSDK-K4A-Wrapper · GitHub If you download the Windows SDK zip file you’ll find it in the /bin folder.
Hm, i was just trying to do it yesterday but in TD latest pops alpha couldn’t Orbbec Femto Mega in Kinect Azure TOP. Any ideas why?
Orbbec TOP worked though.
There have been a few changes to the Orbbec code in the POPs alpha branch which haven’t been tested extensively, so it is possible that something has broken in that version. I’ll try to set up a test here and see what I can find.
Sorry for the delay, but I finally got an Orbbec camera setup with POE to test in the POPs alpha branch.
I did run into a few issues, but they didn’t sound the same as yours. When I used the Kinect Azure TOP and switched it to Orbbec mode, it was able to find the camera on the network. However, when I used the Orbbec TOP there was a problem with the drop down menu and I wasn’t able to select the camera even though it was found. It looked like the image below (where the menu is cropped in front of the Specify IP label:
I gather this is not the behaviour you are seeing?
One tool you might find useful that is mentioned above: if you set the TOUCH_TEXT_CONSOLE environment variable to 1 and restart TouchDesigner, it will open a console window alongside the regular touch window. When you activate the Orbbec TOP or switch the Kinect Azure TOP to Orbbec mode, you should see a lot of debug information in that console window include where it loaded the config file from and whether it detected the camera on the network.
Can you confirm if it is loading the config file that you expect on your machine and whether it appears to be finding the camera?
