Micro-cuts Leapmotion signals with Orion API

I have some problems with the leap motion tracking via the Orion API Version 4.

Problem: Signal instability with micro-cuts at almost regular intervals (high interval: every 3 or 4 frames so rather annoying)

This does not happen when selecting the V2 tracking API (but it is still much less accurate)

This did not happen some time ago (few weeks),

Config :

  • PC window 10 (up to date), Touchdesigner (2021.13610)
  • Leapmotion : Orion API V4.1.0 (last driver)
  • Same on 2 PCs : so not a hardware problem
  • Same with 2 different Leapmotion : so a priori, not a sensor problem
  • Same with the last 6 built TD
  • All leapmotion device status are green (in the Leap Motion control panel)
  • Leapmotion recalibrated several times

Has this problem been encountered recently by other people?

Thanks

Louk

Well, it seems that I managed to solve the problem.

For keeping track of the problem and the solution, here are some actions to do if you encounter unexplained outages in your leap motion signal

First, you can manually restart the service

If you have a firmware conflict, you can reset it
https://developer-archive.leapmotion.com/downloads/firmware-reset

Glad you found a solution and thanks for sharing it with the community.

Hi there @Infratonal !

Im having the same problem, would you care to explain what you did to solve this issue?

Thanks!

If you got micro-cuts, you have to check those things first :

In my case, restarting manually the device services helped me.

So you restart manually the devices everytime you run?

Thank you for the reply!

no, it solved the problem permanently for me.

Do you have outages using the Orion and V4 API as well? How often do you experience outages?

Yes the outages occur when using the V4 API. I have the feeling that when using low performance CPU / GPU machines, the problem is more common. Still need to test to find out the pattern!

meanwhile, might roll back to V3.2 for stability sake…

Hum, ok It’s maybe not the same issue I encountered then, because my problem was only with ORION API and V4 was ok for me. Rolling back to 3.2 would be a solution, but I think the tracking is less accurate, and you won’t have access to Orion API.

Leapmotion is still “touchy” to use, but maybe indeed, the solution will come from testing (different leap, different USB load, Different Computer, Light situation…)

And if it’s very short and rare outages, It’s always a good solution to mitigate them inside Touchdesigner with subtle CHOP lag or other solutions (Very good video series about this by Ian Shelanskey : TouchDesigner Tutorial - Denoising Sensor Data - Part 1 - YouTube)

Maybe with the new Gemini V5 software this problem will go away?

@robmc any hints on TD adopting this new generation?

Cheers

1 Like

@ben any word on the future adoption of the gemini drivers for the leap motion (see above)

thanks!

@ruigato sorry I missed your previous message. We don’t have any immediate plans to update our leap support, but the new drivers definitely look interesting and it sounds like they’ve addressed some of the major issues I’ve heard from users.

I will keep an eye on things and bring it up during our next planning session.

thats great @robmc, thank you for the update on the status

right now I’m facing a crash when using a intel NUC with the version 2 API drivers, probably because of the absence of dedicated graphics card. This issue does not occur when using version 2 with a full PC with NVIDIA.

I can send you the crash .dmp file if you are interested, but might be more productive to move over to version 5 if the issues found on version 4 get solved with that!

edit:

the major issue with version 4 is the onset of the tracking state, and the intermittent disconnection listed above

@ruigato You don’t need an Nvidia GPU. Recommend for API Version 2 Tracking using Orion Beta v3.2.1 as described here: https://docs.derivative.ca/Leap_Motion_CHOP if you are not using those.

@ben yup it works without the NVIDIA GPU with v3.2.1 on the NUC, but after a while it crashes.

I point to the GPU because the same usage of the driver v3.2.1 does not crash when using a PC with a NVIDIA GPU.

Send the dump file if you still have it, or can make a new one.

TouchDesignerCrash.2021.15020.1.dmp (258.3 KB)

Thanks Rui, sorry for the delay, looking into it.

Hey Rob,

Just for information, ultraleap released the new version (Gemini) of their tracking sofware.

Maybe you will find relevant to integrate it in Touchdesigner as it seems to be more stable.

Thank you !

Louk

Thanks for the info. I actually contacted ultraleap recently to look into potentially updating our support, and I’m currently waiting to hear back.