Intel RealSense Stereo Depth Cameras

[Uehreka]

Back in 2021 I needed some stereo cameras for an AR experience I was building for the 2020 World’s Fair Expo (yes, it took place in 2021 but was called 2020). We looked into RealSense, and right around when we did there was some news that Intel had either laid off the RealSense team or stopped manufacturing new cameras. Whatever it was, it made us look elsewhere, as it does not seem like Intel is serious about developing/maintaining this product line.

We ended up going with the ZED 2i from Stereolabs (https://www.stereolabs.com/products/zed-2). They work pretty well, my only issue was that their skeletal tracking doesn’t work well if you mount them vertically (which is probably a big ask, the other features do work in vertical orientation though, which was good).

Stereolabs was pretty active on the software side of things, pushing updates pretty regularly. They’d usually fix a bug within a sprint or two. The hardware is pretty simple, and I find it unsurprising that they’re still selling the ZED 2i at the same price as 4 years ago. It gets the job done, and most of the advancement in the past few years has probably come from throwing more sophisticated AI at the existing stereo video feed.

[MrBuddyCasino]

> it made us look elsewhere, as it does not seem like Intel is serious about developing/maintaining this product line

Everyone has to find out eventually, that unless „product line“ is high-margin CPUs, Intel will cancel it sooner or later. I hope they aren’t stupid enough to do that with their GPUs (again).

[ein0p]

At that price why not just get a full blown LIDAR from Unitree? I guess that wasn't available in 2020, but nowadays, why not?

[whoevercares]

Same story back in 2016, they either laid off or pivoted heavily on the production plan. Can’t trust those real sense folks

[Symmetry]

Long, long ago the the Kinect came out and it was able to provide 3D imaging for robotics companies at an incredibly good pricepoint compared to everything that came before it. Then the company that made it created a version with just the 3D sensor and that was even better.

But then Apple bought them for what would later become face unlock. Apple wasn't interested in being a component supplier so they discontinued selling sensors to robotics companies and it was a bad time for robotics companies that had incorporated these into their products.

Into this Intel came with RealSense, with better performance in an even smaller form factor. This was really nice. Then Intel released a garbled statement about discontinuing RealSense in 2024 and everybody freaked out. A lot of companies, like the one I was working at, decided this was the time develop and in-house 3D sensor system.

Apparently Intel is spinning them out as an independent company, though, so maybe we don't actually have to worry about Intel losing interest and shutting them down.

https://www.therobotreport.com/intel-spins-out-realsense-as-...

[nirav72]

I had both the original Kinect (xbox 360) and then Xbox One Kinect. I found that I was able to find a lot more libraries and projects around the original Kinect. Sadly, I misplaced the original 360 Kinect when I moved to a new house and have never been able to find it. I still have the xbox one Kinect. But it seems that there isn't lot of of development done around it. Even though it had more sensors and had better imaging.

[dcanelhas]

You can still buy primesense devices afaik

http://xtionprolive.com/asus-xtion-pro-live

[IshKebab]

I thought Intel shut down Realsense years ago. It turns out they didn't exactly, and the D421 module is actually a new product. Apparently they're going to spin it out.

https://www.therobotreport.com/intel-spins-out-realsense-as-...

$80 is a bargain for that module. I hope they sell them in fewer than 10s though...

[lastdong]

It’s $800?

Edit: corrected it’s 800 for a 10 pack

https://store.intelrealsense.com/buy-intel-realsense-depth-m...

[gertlex]

You're not really misremembering. There was a bunch of drama around a press release or something, with various robotics companies having to reach out to their Intel contacts to get a better picture of what was going on. The press release or whatever derived headline was indeed not quite accurate...

[ftrobro]

I've tried to use Intel RealSense in the past but found the output to be unreliable. I had much better results with Chronoptics KEA:

https://www.chronoptics.com/products/kea

[dcanelhas]

In what way was it unreliable? And how does Chronoptics ToF sensor perform better?

[donatj]

If you visit the "Buy" page, in the Breadcrumbs near the top of the page. they seem to be listed under EOL Products. End-of-life I presume, so I think we're late to the party here.

Am I crazy thinking that seems like a lot of money for what amounts to two webcams in one box? Does the hardware itself do any of the decoding of the stereoscopic image or is that all down to software?

[omershapira]

I really have to hand it to these companies for making these sensors. They're thin margin, not a sectorial revenue driver, but still fundamental to the industry in a "who else is going to do it?" sort of way.

Every once in a while an exec will see the first part of the sentence above as a cost optimization opportunity and will set this industry back by years. This is what happened to most Kinects and previous Realsense cameras. And yet they keep coming back, precisely because they are terrible standalone businesses.

[sand500]

Is this going to finally replace all the Xbox Kinects everyone uses?

[andoma]

The final version of the Kinect, called "Azure Kinect" was based around the ADSD3100 time-of-flight sensor from Analog Devices. The Kinect has since been abandoned by Microsoft. However, Analog offers a match-box sized module ADTF3175 integrating the ADSD3100-sensor, optics and VCSEL (940nm laser illuminator) with MIPI 4-lanes output. A devkit [1] also exist and is available from mouser, digikey, et al.

[1] https://www.analog.com/en/resources/evaluation-hardware-and-...

[transpute]

Underlying tech since acquired by Apple.

[aomix]

We had serious reliability issues with USB versions that were only solved by switching to the D457 model with GSML connectors. Those needed other hardware vendors to build in support for it to work but once that was all done we never had an issue again. Happy times going from alerts daily of the camera dropping out to alerts never.

[gertlex]

We managed to get pretty solid reliability with the USB C versions, to the point where I can't remember the last time we had a flaky robot due to this. I can't remember specifics of what we fixed (I think it was a combination of screw-in connectors at he camera, good cables, and kernel stuff). But yes... pain until then.

[johnmarie]

Recommend Zivid cameras instead of Realsense! They are industrial grade, structured light, and more pricy but worth the cost. Super impressive point clouds and 2D. https://www.zivid.com/comparison-point-cloud-quality

[londons_explore]

Anytime you see something cool with a global shutter (like this does), the next gen of the same thing will use a rolling shutter and be half or less the price.

Global shutter makes the math of everything easier, and is therefore good for getting a product out the door quicker, but rolling shutter cameras are cheaper and perform better.

[nirav72]

Arducam actually makes one with stereo depth sensing that has global shutter. (I've never tried it though)

https://www.arducam.com/product/opencv-ai-kit-oak-d-lite-ov7...

[whycome]

Unless you’re moving fast, then a rolling shutter introduces that “slant” effect for captured imagery.

[momoschili]

These have been around since at least 2016 and haven't really made any real waves... it's another technology Intel held out to dry. Stereo is a reliable tech that is relatively simple to implement but for the most part it seems to be have been left behind by other methods that are better suited for compact form factors in consumer like time of flight, or even LIDAR. Intel itself tried its hand at LIDAR, but shuttered the LIDAR real sense cameras in the early 2020s after no success.

I think the only consumer application where I know of stereo 3D being used is in hobbyist 3D scanners. I'm sure there's some machine vision applications in industrial QC, but besides that not really much else. Maybe in AR/VR but even there it seems ToF is a better match.

[krasin]

RealSense is a golden standard in Robotics research. ALOHA, which was one of the first swallows of the new AI+Robotics wave, was enabled by RealSense: https://aloha-2.github.io/

[gertlex]

There certainly hasn't been a consumer use case for these.

But the RealSense line are quite commonly seen on a wide variety of robots (maybe specifically those from US-based start-ups) over the past 8 years or so, at least from what I've seen.

[ofrzeta]

> Stereo is a reliable tech that is relatively simple to implement

why are the cameras so expensive then? I guess their optics aren't particularly high-grade either.

[rurban]

We use their stereo cams for pointclouds, but are not exactly happy about it. Very fragile USB-C transport, the headers are a horrible mess (only fixed in our local fork), their streaming server changed completely (we are still using the old one).

Lots of my code deals with just realsense resetting, firmware uploading just to unblock comms, restarting or even rebooting the device. And they blocked firmware uploads in their new versions, so you cannot unblock comms anymore without rebooting.

Not recommended.

[phkahler]

Range? On the front page is says 60cm to 6m and on the other page is says 0.2m to 2m. That's a 3x difference in the same spec, which is it?

[zamadatix]

Can you clarify which other page?

[thebeardisred]

Attempting to use Intel Real sense cameras on anything but Microsoft Windows has been a fools errand for me. The driver situation is awful and the SDK is annoying too.

[ycuser2]

Is it possible to take 180° 3d videos with it?

[Tepix]

Their FOV is 75° × 50°, so no.

[singularity2001]

Intel® RealSense™ Depth Camera D456 $469.00

For that price you can get a used iPhone with LIDAR if you don't own one yet?

[mmcwilliams]

You can, but how well does that iPhone integrate as a ROS node?

[high_na_euv]

But how do they compare?