[ros-users] libfreenect based Kinect driver

[Brian Gerkey]

hi,

I agree that freenect is far simpler and easier to wrap your head
around.  Whenever I've tried to do something unusual with a kinect
(e.g., attach it to Gumstix), I've gone with freenect instead of
openni.  On the other hand, openni does, AFAIK, offer more features
and is, at least in principle, supported by the folks who designed the
chips.

On the third hand, the openni-based driver in ROS only really worked
well for a brief period when 1 or 2 people were working on it,
essentially full time, to quash bugs and stability problems.  Frankly,
that's more overhead than is warranted for any driver.  Talking to a
piece of hardware should be a once-and-done exercise.

I'm pretty sure that we'd be giving up something if we choose freenect
over openni, but I think that we'd all prefer stability over features.
 The most important thing is that someone who cares enough to work on
it step and take ownership of the driver; it's been orphaned since
Patrick left Willow in the spring.

    brian.

On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 10:49 PM, Piyush <piyushk at gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks for pointing me to your driver Kevin. I'll take a look at it.
>
> About the stability issues of openni, here is my personal take on the
> matter. I believe necessary action has been taken by members of the
> ROS community. This thread captures a lot of it:
> http://answers.ros.org/question/33622/openni_launch-not-working-in-fuerte-ubuntu-precise-1204/.
> Unfortunately, I was unable to get any of the solutions to work. At
> this time, I am not sure what the next best step is.
>
> libfreenect is considerably simpler, easier to follow through, and
> does not launch a separate daemon. More importantly, I can get it to
> work. This might not be the best reason, but I found the libfreenect
> based kinect_camera stack back in diamondback quite stable and easy to
> use. Ever since the move to OpenNI, I have seen problems because of
> driver instability or API transitions. This has led me to believe
> (perhaps erroneously) that a libfreenect based driver will be more
> stable. The caveat of course is that you cannot use other primesense
> devices through the same driver, but I don't think this is a big
> issue.
>
> Piyush,
>
> On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 10:12 PM, Edwards, Shaun M. <sedwards at swri.org> wrote:
>>
>> Is there a reason you didn't address the stability issues in the openni driver instead of switching to the libfreenect?
>>
>> By the way I think this is a critical issue. Many people use the kinect and having an unstable driver in ROS is a big black eye.
>>
>> Sent from my mobile phone
> _______________________________________________
> ros-users mailing list
> ros-users at code.ros.org
> https://code.ros.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-users