Hello All,
I have a question regarding the automation add on.
First off- It is great, I am working with it and it makes me able to automate exactly what I want to.

I am trying to create single board computer systems to record gait testing for research and use the biomech add-on to process. These recording systems are small and battery powered. My goal is to have a central laptop control and start recordings on these systems with a script though ssh. Then those recordings will be transferred to the processing computer later.
My Question is:
Do I need to have the automation add-on licence on each system running the recorder in order to run the program to automate recording. Those systems do not even have IpiStudio on them (I am not sure they will be able to run studio). Is there another way to automate the recording that I am missing?

I don't know if I am being clear, but I can try to clarify if needed.
Thank you for your help.

FYI: The SBC system for recording in development uses:
Intel Up Board (Windows 10)
Intel RealSense 435

Hello,
as to Automation, you need to have iPi Mocap Studio with activated license key on every computer controlled via automation. Even if you only use iPi Recorder and do not use iPi Mocap Studio itself. You can transfer license key from one computer to another if you do not need them to run at the same time. In you really need multiple computer for recording, we can make you special offer, just contact us via sales@ipisoft.com

Just in case you haven't already seen depth sensors quality comparison page, here the link to it:
http://docs.ipisoft.com/Depth_Sensors_Comparison
(Intel RealSense is not the best option in terms of quality unfortunately)

_________________
iPi Soft

Thank you @Pas
I will talk to the doctor in charge to look into it for automation solution.

We were using the Kinect 2, but bulkyness and wires were a major issue as we want system to be small and portable enough to bring into someones home and the FPS/Resolution of the RealSense seemed promising. I have noticed a quality issue on Ipi. Using just the RealSense SDK2,0 the depth data seems to be less noisy than on the Ipi software. Is the noise issue being worked on? Or should I look at another smaller, single cord sensor?

RealSense SDK includes software filtering of the depth data aimed for noise reduction. However, too much filtering brings other unwanted effects to the data like motion blur or delays.

You can actually play with RealSense filtering in iPi Recorder. Click on a camera screen to open the Properties panel. First, look at "Settings profile" combo. A profile defines specific values for some individual settings. 2 built-in profiles come with iPi Recorder - Default which enables some temporal processing and No depth processing which disables filtering altogether. Check which one is better for you.

If you are not completely satisfied with any and are curious enough then you can go further to the System Dialog (press that button in the bottom of Properties panel). On the Depth Processing tab you'll find the full range of available options for depth processing. Please don't ask me about the meaning of specific options - RealSense docs/forums may help you better than me here :) Play with them to find what works best for you.

Note that individual processing options are not persisted between runs of iPi Recorder. But the value of settings profile does. So if you want to use filtering different from our Default profile permanently then you'll need to create your own profile. Currently you can do it by hand only by editing iPiRecorder.RealSense2.Profiles.ini file in the installation folder of iPi Recorder. Either edit one of existing profiles or create a new section.

Below is the list of profile settings related to depth processing. In parentheses I put a dialog control which value corresponds to the setting. Checkboxes are stored as "True"/"False". Combo values are stored as zero-based indexes.

• Depth.VisualPreset (Depth Sensor > Advanced-Mode Preset). Actually it affects the input data coming from a sensor.
• Processing.Temporal.Enabled (Depth Processing > Temporal Filter > Enable)
• Processing.Temporal.FilterSmoothAlpha (Depth Processing > Temporal Filter > Normalized weight of current pixel)
• Processing.Temporal.FilterSmoothDelta (Depth Processing > Temporal Filter > Filter smooth delta)
• Processing.Temporal.HolesFill (Depth Processing > Temporal Filter > Persistency mode)
• Processing.Spatial.Enabled (Depth Processing > Spatial Filter > Enable)
• Processing.Spatial.FilterMagnitude (Depth Processing > Spatial Filter > Filtering iterations)
• Processing.Spatial.FilterSmoothAlpha (Depth Processing > Spatial Filter > Current pixel weight)
• Processing.Spatial.FilterSmoothDelta (Depth Processing > Spatial Filter > Convolution radius)
• Processing.Spatial.HolesFill (Depth Processing > Spatial Filter > Holes filling mode)
• Processing.Disparity.Enabled (Depth Processing > Filter in disparity space)

That is a great tip! Just a quick change and there is a notable improvement. (increasing manual laser power seems to help a lot). I am going to go into greater detail in the settings and try to find the best parameters. I will post to forum with my results for anyone else with RealSense problems.

Am I able to see the advance mode preset anywhere in text files? Or is there an entire doc with this info anywhere to edit whole profile?

There is no doc as we did not intend profiles for editing by users. As I've said we don't have complete understanding of filtering options provided by RealSense SDK, so cannot describe the purpose of each value. You can change values in dialog until you are satisfied with obtained data. Then store all settings in a profile in INI file.

What do you mean by advance mode preset you are looking for? There is a drop-down option in system dialog called Advanced-Mode Preset on Depth Sensor tab. Corresponding option in profiles is called Depth.VisualPreset and its value is 0-based index of drop-down item.

I was looking for for the profile setting information about those advance mode preset (For example what are the settings associated with "Hand" or "High Density"). In doing some research I see these are defined by the Realsesnse SDK (https://github.com/IntelRealSense/libre ... al-Presets), and not able to be tweaked in a text file. I am still messing with settings to get the best body definition with the realsense... reading and figuring out the realsense SDK is like going down a rabbit hole... I appreciate you guys trying to parse it to add the functionality into your system.

I'll try to explain you in more detail.

Advance mode presets are things inherent to RealSense SDK. They define values for some very internal parameters controlling the work of sensor/SDK. Specific values are listed in accompanying json files in the link you've posted.
You can change the preset used in the system dialog we provide for RealSense devices (SYSTEM DIALOG button on Properties pane), using dropdown on Depth Sensor tab. Hand and High Density presets are there.

Besides presets, RealSense SDK provides a whole bunch of other parameters controlling the end result. Particularly those used for software filtering. Because there are so many settings we've added setting profiles on top of that. A profile can include values for all settings available in System Dialog, including Advanced Mode Preset. You can select the profile used on the Properties pane, Settings profile dropdown. Once selected, all setting values defined in the profile are applied. Also, selected profile is persisted between runs of the program, so it's automatically applied next time you run iPi Recorder.

Based on our experiments we've defined 3 profiles that come with the software - 2 Defaults for different frame rates with some temporal filtering and 1 without filtering. If you find a combination of settings (in System Dialog) that works better for your application than existing profiles you can define your own profile. Profiles are stored in iPiRecorder.RealSense2.Profiles.ini file in the installation folder of iPi Recorder. Note that you need to run Notepad (or other editor) under administrator's account in order to save changes to that file.

Each profile is defined as a section in that INI file


I know, this is not convenient. You cannot just save current settings in System Dialog to a profile with a click of a button. But that's all you've got for now.

Thank you, all great info.