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Depth camera for Mac users

Anyone who's worked with TouchDesigner before would have surely stumbled across some Kinect tutorial, which unfortunately is only compatible with Windows. The Creative Technology Hub now offers students the chance to borrow an OAK-D Pro camera. These are IR depth cameras compatible with both Mac and Windows, making it a great alternative to the Kinect. This page will briefly guide you through installing the prerequisites and show you how to set the camera up in TouchDesigner.

1. Setting Up the OAK-D Pro Camera

1.1 Installing Dependencies

Before using the OAK-D Pro with TouchDesigner, you'll need to install some dependencies:

  • Python 3.8+ 

  • DepthAI Library

Assuming you've already installed Python and pip, you can check your Python version by opening the terminal and typing in: 

pyhton --version

Next

pip install depthai

 

Connect the camera to your laptop and launch Touchdesigner. From the Operators panel find the OAK Device CHOP and Activate the chop, refresh the sensor list to find your camera. Click Initialize and wait for it to mark "Ready" (1) then press Start. This CHOP runs the code in Text DAT to capture RGB data from the camera, using the DepthAI library. To display this data, from the Operators panel find the OAK Select TOP. Open its parameter window, drag and drop your CHOP into the OAK Select TOP parameter 'OAK Device CHOP', then click on the arrow next to the Stream parameter and select 'rgb'. Your camera should now be running! 

import depthai as dai

def onInitialize(oakDeviceOp, callCount):
	return 0

def onInitializeFail(oakDeviceOp):
	parent().addScriptError(oakDeviceOp.scriptErrors())
	return

def onReady(oakDeviceOp):
	return
	
def onStart(oakDeviceOp):
	return

def whileRunning(oakDeviceOp):
    return

def onDone(oakDeviceOp):
	return

def createPipeline(oakDeviceOp):
    # Create pipeline
    pipeline = dai.Pipeline()

    # Define sources and outputs
    monoLeft = pipeline.create(dai.node.MonoCamera)
    monoRight = pipeline.create(dai.node.MonoCamera)
    depth = pipeline.create(dai.node.StereoDepth)
    xout = pipeline.create(dai.node.XLinkOut)

    # Set stream name
    xout.setStreamName("disparity")

    # Properties
    # Set the resolution for the mono cameras to 1280x800 (800P)
    monoLeft.setResolution(dai.MonoCameraProperties.SensorResolution.THE_800_P)
    monoLeft.setBoardSocket(dai.CameraBoardSocket.LEFT)
    monoRight.setResolution(dai.MonoCameraProperties.SensorResolution.THE_800_P)
    monoRight.setBoardSocket(dai.CameraBoardSocket.RIGHT)

    # Configure depth node
    depth.setDefaultProfilePreset(dai.node.StereoDepth.PresetMode.HIGH_DENSITY)
    depth.initialConfig.setMedianFilter(dai.MedianFilter.KERNEL_7x7)
    depth.initialConfig.setConfidenceThreshold(240)
    depth.setLeftRightCheck(True)
    depth.setExtendedDisparity(False)
    depth.setSubpixel(False)

    # Linking
    monoLeft.out.link(depth.left)
    monoRight.out.link(depth.right)
    depth.disparity.link(xout.input)

    return pipeline

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