Alternating IR emitter between on/off

[sogartar]

Required Info
Camera Model	D435
Firmware Version	05.08.14.00
Operating System & Version	Linux Ubuntu 16.04
Kernel Version (Linux Only)	4.4
Platform	NVIDIA Jetson
SDK Version	development branch

Issue Description

I would like to be able to switch on/off the IR emitter rapidly between frames while the sensor is running. From the source code of librealsense it looks like it is not possible to know if an IR/Depth frame was acquired when the emitter was on or off. Do you know if turning on/off the emitter requires some heavy lifting on the device or the library? Could we also have this info in the frame metadata in a future release?

[dab0bby]

This would be very interesting for my use case also

[agrunnet]

This is a planned feature...Will come in a few months.
Good to hear you will have use for it.

[kirsitn]

This is very much of interest to me as well. I would like to capture every second frame with the emitter on and off, and at the moment it seems to take up to 6 frames before the emitter option is registered by the sensor. (Possibly even longer time, because I first set the emitter option and then capture a number of frames to see how long it takes for the emitter to turn on/off. I haven't tried setting the option inside the capture loop since it seems futile to do this as long as I don't know whether I'm actually capturing data with the right settings.)

[RealSenseCustomerSupport]

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This feature is enabled in firmware 5.11+ as you can see in the release note.

[dorodnic]

To be more precise it is enabled starting firmware 5.11.4 for Global-Shutter devices only (D43x)

[john-maidbot]

Hi, is this feature bad for the long term health of the emitter? Does Intel have any documentation on the number of cycles to expect from a realsense emitter? (e.g. on the d435)

[MartyG-RealSense]

Hi @john-maidbot There is not data available on the lifespan of the emitter. The laser can wear out over time but as the emitter is a separate hardware component from the sensors then the camera can continue to operate, though with reduced quality of the depth image.

[john-maidbot]

Thank you for the information.