Intel's RealSense Camera Doesn't Yet Have Proper Linux Support

Written by Michael Larabel in Intel on 10 January 2015 at 06:12 AM EST. 4 Comments
INTEL
Intel RealSense is a Kinect-like 3D camera. The Intel RealSense 3D camera is intended to have a variety of applications from 3D scanning to "immersive collaboration" to gaming, but sadly its Linux support isn't yet up to scratch.

Over at Solsticlipse they got ahold of a RealSense camera integrated into an Intel laptop design. The developer toying with RealSense on Linux had the microphone detected and the device detected as two web-cameras using the uvcvideo driver. One of the video devices is exposed as a 1080p web camera while the other is just providing the source of the depth image. Using v4l2-ctl and GStreamer, some progress was made in looking at the device under Linux, but not too much.


Next up using VMware Player the developer was able to run the Intel RealSense SDK for Windows atop the Ubuntu installation. VMware Player supported the USB 3.0 pass-through needed for the RealSense and it was then possible to inspect the USB traffic with Wireshark.

The developer looking at the RealSense camera on Linux remains interested in the technology but is sad that there's no RealSense SDK for Linux at this point. The developer is now trying to do some crowdfunding to work on better Linux/open-source support for RealSense. Those interested in more information on the initial RealSense Linux trials can visit Solsticlipse.com. Those that have yet to hear of Intel RealSense, which was real popular this week at CES in Las Vegas, see the Intel.com overview and the Intel software page.
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Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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