Synchronizing ZED-X on Jetson Orin and ZED2i on Desktop PC – is cross-host sync feasible?

Hardware
1

Hello StereoLabs team and community,

I would like to ask for advice regarding multi-camera synchronization across different hosts using ZED cameras.

Current physical setup

  • Jetson Orin

    • ZED-X × 3

    • Connected via GMSL capture board

    • Hardware synchronized (shared trigger / clock)

  • Desktop PC

    • ZED2i × 3

    • Connected via USB

  • The two machines are connected on the same local network

At the moment, the cameras are physically split across two hosts:

  • ZED-X cameras on Jetson Orin

  • ZED2i cameras on a Desktop PC

My consideration

I am deciding between:

Option A — Keep the current split setup

  • ZED-X (HW sync) on Orin

  • ZED2i (USB) on Desktop

  • Attempt synchronization using:

    • network / host clock based synchronization

    • timestamps alignment across machines

Option B — Move ZED2i to Jetson Orin

  • ZED-X (GMSL) + ZED2i (USB) all on one host

  • Synchronize using a single host clock

  • Still mixed hardware-sync (ZED-X) and USB-sync (ZED2i)

Intended usage

  • Capture data locally (mainly SVO files)

  • Synchronization accuracy is important for:

    • multi-view temporal alignment

    • downstream processing (not just visualization)

  • Real-time streaming is not a strict requirement

My main questions

  1. Is reliable temporal synchronization feasible when ZED-X and ZED2i are connected to different hosts, even if they share the same local network?

  2. In practice, how does cross-host synchronization accuracy compare to:

    • keeping all cameras on a single host (Jetson Orin)?

  3. Would StereoLabs recommend:

    • keeping cameras on separate machines, or

    • consolidating all cameras onto one host for better synchronization?

  4. Even on a single host, should ZED-X and ZED2i still be treated as separately synchronized groups?

Key concern

The core question is whether images from:

  • ZED-X (hardware synchronized)

  • ZED2i (USB based)

can reasonably be considered as captured at the same moment in time,
either across hosts or on a single host.

Any guidance on best practices, limitations, or recommended architectures would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you very much.

2

Hi @min
The only way to achieve this kind of synchronization is by extracting all the data in queues and comparing the timestamps.

It’s also important that the system time of the different hosts is synchronized, so I recommend you consider using PTP or other time synchronization methods: