[ros-users] openni_camera and the /etc/primesense/GlobalDefaults.ini file

[Patrick Mihelich]

On Wed, Aug 31, 2011 at 3:29 PM, Ivan Dryanovski
<ivan.dryanovski at gmail.com>wrote:

> I am seriously confused about the role of the
> /etc/primesense/GlobalDefaults.ini file in the ros openni_camera
> driver. In this thread [1], I was told by Suat that the driver does
> not in fact use that file. However, I get different behavior from the
> openni driver when I change parameters in the file, leading me to
> empirically believe that the driver does in fact use it, or at least
> parts of it.
>

I believe Suat was mistaken here. I don't know what the code path is, but at
some point during initialization OpenNI (or maybe the ps_engine module) does
read in GlobalDefaults.ini, so changes to that file do change driver
behavior.

The real confusion sets in when I attempt to change parameters that
> the Kinect device is supposed to support. For example, changing the
> WhiteBalance and Gain currently has no effect. I find this really
> weird, since I do remember being able at one point to turn off auto
> white balance by modifying the file.
>

WhiteBalance and Gain are listed under the [Depth] section of
GlobalDefaults.ini, so I don't think those even affect the RGB stream. We've
also been frustrated by the lack of access to camera settings through
OpenNI. People have asked about exposure/gain/white-balance on the OpenNI
list several times, and I've never seen a response.

The freenect guys have reverse engineered some useful camera settings, which
is promising, but they don't seem to offer easy API access yet either.

For work where we absolutely need high-quality RGB images with fine control
of settings, we've calibrated a separate RGB cam to the depth sensor. But
this is obviously a pain.

I also recently obtained a Axus Xtion Live Pro device. I was under the
> impression the device should provide hardware sync and registration
> capabilities - I have not been able to get either so far. I was told
> in the openni googlegroups [2] that both should be available using the
> openni API. Is this being handled properly by the ros driver?
>

We just obtained a Live Pro ourselves, but haven't had much time to play
with it yet. We got garbled RGB images from it, so there's at least one
property we aren't setting correctly.

I don't know whether the Live Pro actually supports hardware sync and/or
registration. Your experience suggests it does not, which would be a shame.

Cheers,
Patrick
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