Introduction
The Intel® RealSense™ Depth Camera Manager (DCM) is intended to expose interfaces to streaming video from the Intel® RealSense™ camera F200 and R200, for both color and depth data streams. The camera service allows multiple Intel® RealSense™ SDK applications and a single non-SDK application to access data from the camera simultaneously, without blocking each other. Without the camera service, only one application can access the data from the camera at a time to assure that the correct data is received.
DCM Functionality
The DCM is the primary interface between the Intel RealSense camera and SDK clients via the Intel RealSense SDK APIs. The DCM exposes and manipulates all extended 2D and 3D camera capabilities to the client system. It provides a compatible interface to standard video application within the DCM environment via a virtual imaging device driver. It also manages camera control, access policy, and power management when multiple applications access the DCM. For these DCM functionalities to work properly, the DCM must be downloaded from Intel and installed on the platform that is equipped with an Intel RealSense camera. Visit https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/25044 to download F200 and http://registrationcenter-download.intel.com/akdlm/irc_nas/7787/intel_rs_dcm_r200_2.0.3.39488.exe to download R200 DCM for Windows* 8.1 and Windows 10. The functionality of the DCM applies to different Intel RealSense camera models such as F200 and R200.
F200 Camera Model
The Intel RealSense camera F200 is the first generation of front-facing 3D cameras based on coded light depth technology. The camera implements an infrared (IR) laser projector system, VGA infrared (IR) camera, and a 2MP color camera with integrated ISP. This camera enables new platform usages by providing synchronized color, depth, and IR video stream data to the client system. The effective range of the depth solution from the camera is optimized from 0.2 to 1.0m for use indoors.
R200 Camera Model
The Intel RealSense camera R200 is the first generation of rear-facing 3D cameras based on active stereoscopic depth technology. The camera implements an IR laser projector, VGA stereoscopic IR cameras, and a 2MP color camera with integrated ISP. With synchronized color and infrared depth sensing features, the camera enables a wide variety of exciting new platform usages. The depth usage range of the camera depends upon the module and the lighting. The indoor range is up to 3 meters and the outdoor range is up to 10 meters.
Figure 1: DCM Model – High level view
Hardware Requirements
For details on system requirements and supported operating systems for F200 and R200, see https://software.intel.com/en-us/RealSense/Devkit/
DCM Components
There are two DCM components: DCM service and DCM virtual driver.
DCM ServiceThe DCM service runs on the client machine and controls multiple application requests to operate the managed cameras. The DCM service also dispatches multiple access requests from several applications accessing the same video stream. The DCM service runs at startup and allows multiple clients applications to connect to it. The DCM Service interfaces to the camera through the Camera DLL and is the primary camera interface for all application types. The Camera DLL is camera-model specific and extends hardware functionality for each camera. Below is an example of the task manager of the system that has DCMs for F200 and R200 installed.
Figure 2: The DCM Service runs at startup
DCM Virtual Driver
The DCM virtual driver is a virtual AVStream device driver that supports a compatible interface into the DCM for standard video applications. This virtual driver allows standard video applications to access the camera concurrently with multiple SDK applications.
Detecting the DCM Version
Go to the shortcut “Intel® RealSense™ SDK Gold” from the desktop, then “Samples\Sample binaries” or C:\Program Files (x86)\Intel\RSSDK\bin\win32 directory and open sdk_info. The Camera tab shows the DCM service version and other information about the cameras that are installed in the platform. For testing and development purposes, multiple major versions for the DCM can be installed on a platform. During runtime, only one camera—whether the same model or a different one—can be connected to the platform at a time.
Figure 3: RealSense SDK information
Troubleshooting
If the Intel RealSense camera does not stream data correctly:
Make sure that the DCM service exists and is running, as shown in Figure 2.
Check control panel to make sure that the app installed the Intel RealSense SDK Runtime during installation.
Make sure that the camera is connected properly.
Switching Cameras between DCM Runtimes
An SDK client can support different camera models through their respective DCM runtime. The SDK client must close any access to one camera model before switching to the next camera model. Multiple concurrent accesses from the SDK client to multiple camera models are not allowed. If an SDK client enables simultaneous access between multiple camera models, unknown behaviors are likely to occur.
Uninstallation
Before installing the new version of the DCM, uninstall any existing versions. Once you launch the DCM driver on the system that has an existing DCM installed, an uninstaller menu will prompt the uninstall option and other options.
Modify. Edit currently installed feature or feature settings.
Repair. Fix missing or corrupt files, shortcuts, or registry entries.
Remove. Remove the DCM from the system registries and directory structure.
Summary
The Intel RealSense Depth Camera Manager is the primary interface between the Intel RealSense camera and the Intel RealSense SDK clients. It communicates with the Intel RealSense camera through the camera DLL.
Helpful References
Here is a collection of useful references for the Intel RealSense DCM and SDK, including release notes and how to download and update the software.
About the Author
Nancy Le is a software engineer at Intel Corporation in the Software and Services Group working on Intel® Atom™ processor scale-enabling projects.
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