Thoughts and experiences with Orbbec cameras in TD

General TouchDesigner Discussion
1

I would love to hear your thoughts and experience with TD and Orbbec cameras?
in particular:

Orbbec Astra
Orbbec Femto Bolt
Orbbec Femto Mega

I have a budget to purchase one of these cameras and would love to understand which one is more suitable for my project.
I have used the Kinect 2 many times but I am looking to upgrade my set up.

Features that are important for my projects are:

  1. having the camera far away (anywhere from 5m to 50m) from my laptop, and being able to extend the cables easily (it was/ it is a pain with the Kinect 2, never managed to reliably extend its cable)
  2. a camera that works out of the box as much as possible without installing multiple drivers, libraries, long troubleshooting etc…
  3. hi res and reliable depth camera
  4. occasionally I do skeleton tracking
  5. I use Windows primarily for TD

I am also open to other cameras (either a different model of Orbbec, or a different brand altogether), it doens’t need to be necessarily an Orbbec, but based on my research on this forum it seems to be one of the best solutions.

If anyone in Sydney Australia has one and is keen to let me try a camera for half a day please let me know!

Thanks in advance!

2

The Femto Mega is your best investment, especially due to it’s PoE support.

My setup with a $25 TrendNet 1Gbps PoE injector & $25 Anker 1Gbps Ethernet to USB-C adapter has been rock solid.

PoE supports 100m runs after the injector, if you need more distance you can set it up on a network with DHCP or static IPv4.

I would suggest 10Gbps switches if networked though Also it’s good to keep a 2.5Gbps Ethernet to USB-C adapter for NDI connections if you send to a Resolume operator or anything like that. I’ve noticed when I send a moderate resolution streams from my 2.5Gbps NIC to 1.0 Gbps NICs, that receiving apps will sometimes show a stutter that’s not present in NDI studio monitor.

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