Protection against harsh conditions

• MartyG

  • December 06, 2019 17:43
  • Edited

  The standard D435 camera is not waterproof.  A partner company of Intel called FRAMOS produces an industrial variant of the D435 called the D435e though.  It has IP65-rated protection, which means that the camera is protected against dust / dirt and can be fully immersed in water without an additional protective casing.  It also has other special features that the standard D435 does not, such as gigabit ethernet communication built in, a 100 meter range over ethernet, the ability to operate at up to 55 degrees C, and the ability to initiate hardware triggering through the power connector.  It does have a price premium of $1200 USD per camera though.

  https://github.com/IntelRealSense/librealsense/issues/4769 

  The standard Intel D435 can operate in both bright light and low light / dark.  The camera actually works better when in bright light, as it has the ability to use ambient light as a means to analyze the depth of objects.

  In regard to physical touching, the Intel 400 Series cameras are liable to become mis-calibrated if they receive a physical shock such as a hard knock, drop on the floor or severe vibration and require re-calibration with software to correct if this occurs.  So some kind of additional protection around the camera may be required. 

  You can purchase the circuit board of the camera without a casing (called a Depth Module Kit) and build your own custom casing around it,  If you wanted D435-comparable performance with a custom casing, the D430 Depth Module would be an appropriate choice, as the D430 is the Depth Module board used inside the cased D435 camera.

  It is important to note though that if you are interested in using a Depth Module and your project requires RGB image capture, only the D415 Depth Module has an RGB sensor.  Although the D435 excels at capturing fast motion such as vehicles thanks to its fast Global Shutter, human walking pace is sufficiently slow for the D415's slower Rolling Shutter to be able to cope with.

  https://www.intelrealsense.com/stereo-depth-modules-and-processors/ 

  The cameras are able to operate underwater (the standard Intel D435 has to be in a protective casing, the FRAMOS D435e does not) and can also correctly analyze depth when looking through a sheet of glass such as a fish aquarium.  The link below has an example program in the Python language for use in these conditions.

  https://github.com/IntelRealSense/librealsense/blob/jupyter/notebooks/depth_under_water.ipynb 

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• Sjoerd1999

  • December 06, 2019 18:14

  Thanks a lot! Very helpful!

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