Camera Connection Issues

Hardware ZED X
1

Camera Connection Issues

Hello, Myzhar! I hope your day or evening is well.

I am working with a small student club competing in multiple robot competition. We have very little funding and are having issues with camera streaming connection. We believe there to be a hardware issue, but are unsure. Our Zed X camera is our only sensor for odemetry at the moment so we would be very grateful for any assistance.

We have noticed during streaming attempt:

• Corrupted frames detected
• NVIDIA Argus timeout
• CAMERA REBOOTING loop
• Socket communication failures (Argus IPC)
This indicated failure during image stream capture.

We are concerned one of these issues are occuring:

  1. Bandwidth or timing mismatch in the video pipeline
  2. One stereo sensor producing unstable frames under load
  3. Unstable or marginal GMSL cable connection
  4. CSI lane instability between deserializer and Jetson

The following debugging steps have been done:

  • followed install instructions with the zed link duo.
  • Checked camera device nodes
  • Verified device tree camera modules properly registered
  • Attempted raw inspection (binary /proc entries)
  • ZED_Explorer hardware verification with /user/local/zed/tools/ZED_Explorer -a
  • Python SDK minimal camera streaming open test
  • Python SDK camera photo
  • Stereolabs’ Diagnostics Tool
  • Explored various system-level and kernel level logs
  • Attempted running after reinstalling camera and capture card multiple times and verifying they’re installed and secured.

Our debugging confirms that:

  • The camera is correctly installed and detected
  • All drivers and hardware initialization steps succeed
  • The failure occurs only during live video streaming

I have provided hardware and software information below:

Hardware

  • Developer Kit Jetson Orin Nano
  • Zed X
  • Duo Capture Card
  • Power Supply to Duo Capture providing 14v
  • Camera Cable 22-pin 0.5mm Pitch to 15-pin 1.0mm Pitch (150-FPC)
  • GMSL2 1-to-4 M-F cable 0.5m (From Duo Capture Card Box)

Software Stack

  • OS: Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS (GNU/Linux 5.15.185-tegra aarch64)

  • RMW Implementation: rmw_cyclonedds_cpp

  • ZED SDK: v5.2.3

  • L4T: R36.5.0

  • JETPACK: Version: 6.2.2+b24

  • HARDWARE MODE: max

  • Nvidia Driver: Driver Version: 540.5.0

  • CUDA: 12.6

  • ROS: Humble

  • Package: stereolabs-zedlink-duo: 1.4.2-LI-MAX96712-L4T36.5.0

ROS 2 WRAPPER

Install check

VALID OS: Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish)
SDK: ZED SDK v5.2
ROS: Humble

Installed following correct rosdep instructions (such as symlink install) with ros2-zed-interfaces and prevented zed_debug package

[!NOTE]
Install had one warning from xacro.

Additional Contact

If you wish to privately contact us for whatever reason please contact mechatronicsclub@humber.ca

2

Hi @TheFujirose
The first thing that I would recommend doing is upgrading the ZED SDK to the latest v5.3.1 and then using the latest version of the ZED ROS2 Wrapper.

On a robotics system, it’s also important to verify that the power supplied to the ZED Link Duo capture card (14V in your case) is stable.
Every single negative power drop (even very short spikes) can cause the capture card to stop communicating, a condition that cannot be recovered even by software using the sudo service zed_x_daemon restart command.

Finally, the NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano has limited computing power. If you overload it, the ZED X Driver can drop the connection, a condition that you can recover by restarting the daemon with the command above.

Have you applied the DDS tuning illustrated here?

Have you tuned the node frequency as illustrated here?