ZED2i Image Tearing and Inversion Issue at Left 1/3 Area (Neural Plus, ROS1, SDK 4)

Software ROS1
1

Hello,

We are currently using two ZED2i cameras in a ROS1 + ZED SDK 4 environment and are experiencing an intermittent but critical issue.

:jigsaw: Issue Description

Occasionally, the image appears torn or inverted around the left 1/3 vertical region of the frame, as shown in the attached image.
This issue tends to occur more frequently during object detection tasks and is difficult to reproduce consistently. The affected region fluctuates within a ±15% range around the left 1/3 area, making it harder to isolate the root cause.

As a workaround, we tested reducing the resolution to HD720, which seems to reduce the frequency of the issue, but it still occurs occasionally. Therefore, the problem is likely not fully resolved by lowering resolution alone.

:gear: System Setup

  • Cameras: 2 × ZED2i
  • PC: Ubuntu 20.04, NVIDIA RTX 4060
  • Connection: USB 3.0 (5m C-to-A cable; USB-C on camera side, USB-A on PC)
  • SDK: ZED SDK 4.x
  • ROS: ROS1 (Noetic)
  • Camera Mode: Neural Plus, Resolution: 2K (also tested HD720)

:question:What We Are Looking For

  • Is there any known cause or workaround for this kind of image tearing and inversion, especially under long USB cables or Neural/Neural Plus modes?
  • Within the ROS1 ecosystem, is there a recommended approach to detect and filter corrupted frames (e.g., analyzing image continuity, histogram anomalies, or checksum mismatch)?
  • Are there any ZED SDK or USB reliability settings we can tune to reduce this issue further?

We would greatly appreciate any insights or advice on how to prevent or filter out such corrupted frames during runtime.

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2

This issue has been discussed quite a few times on the forum, and there are plenty of conversations about it you can explore.
The frame tearing is normally caused by a bad USB 3 connection or a CPU overload.

In your case, I noticed that you are using two 5m long USB3 cables:

  • Are they connected to two separate USB 3 channels?
  • Are the cables active or passive?
  • Are you using USB 3 hubs?

No, the frame quality check is available only with the ROS 2 Wrapper.
We are no longer adding new features to the ROS Wrapper because ROS is now EOL.

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