[RESOLVED] Femto Bolt installation

Computers & Hardware
1

Do I need to install a DepthKit Studio software upgrade to support them? My fixed 10AK rig has RTX A5000 and the portable rig with up to 8 AK has RTX A5000 Ada with latest i9 13950 HX CPU laptop.

Do they ease CPU load? This is proving to be the factor most affecting system capability.

We could not upgrade drivers for Ada without knocking out Azure Kinect drivers.please advise.

Are all cables exactly the same as for Azure Kinect (AK)?

I have ordered 10 x Femto Bolt for installation/testing early next year.

2

Hi @Terence
Glad to hear you are interested in upgrading to the Femto Bolts! For those of you following along, these are the sensors we just announced support for following the discontinuation of the Azure Kinect

Depthkit Version
Yes! You will need the forthcoming 0.8.0 version of Depthkit to support Femto Bolt. It is currently finalizing testing for official release soon, and we can send you the prelease build anytime you’d like once you have the hardware.

CPU Load
We are seeing a very modest reduction of CPU load with Bolt as compared to Azure Kinect. The big improvement of 10x1440p@30hz has come through Ada generation NVIDIA card, 14th gen Intel i9, along with the Bolts.

I’m not sure what you are talking about with the Driver upgrade comment. Can you clarify? There should be no issue with drivers or compatibility between Ada generation graphics, and Femto Bolt and Azure Kinect.

The Femto Bolt uses the same USB3.0 extender cables for data.

For the Femto Bolt, power is run via wall power and cannot be powered by USB like with Azure Kinect.

The sync cables are different Femto Bolts require Sync Hub Pro and Ethernet cables and adapters for sync. 10 cameras requires 2x sync hub pro to support all 10 sensors. Be sure you have the right sync hardware with your order.

Hope this answers your questions.

3

Thanks for getting back to me James.

In response to your points:

Hi @Terence
Glad to hear you are interested in upgrading to the Femto Bolts! For those of you following along, these are the sensors we just announced support for following the discontinuation of the Azure Kinect

Depthkit Version
Yes! You will need the forthcoming 0.8.0 version of Depthkit to support Femto Bolt. It is currently finalizing testing for official release soon, and we can send you the prelease build anytime you’d like once you have the hardware.

I AM NOT SURE OF DELIVERY ETA TO UK FROM USA BUT THEY EERE ORDERED FROM MAIN SUPPLIER AND WERE IN STOCK. WE WILL HOPEFULLY INSTALL SOON AFTER YOUR DEMO ON 10TH JAN. AND RESOLVE ANY ISSUES IN OUR CALL WITH CORY BOOKED FOR 24TH JAN

CPU Load
We are seeing a very modest reduction of CPU load with Bolt as compared to Azure Kinect. The big improvement of 10x1440p@30hz has come through Ada generation NVIDIA card, 14th gen Intel i9, along with the Bolts.

OUR FIXED STUDIO SYSTEM WITH RTX A5000 WILL BE TESTED WITH 10 FEMBOT BOLTS THEN RE-INSTATED TO USING AZURE KINECT (I NOW HAVE 18). A DECISION WILL THEN BE MADE TO SWITCH BACK LATER.

7 FEMTO BOLTS WILL BE PERMANENTLY ATTACHED TO MY PORTABLE SYSTEM WITH 5000 ADA GPU. SO NEED TO RESOLVE ISSUE ALREADY IDENTIFIED BELOW. I NEED TECH SUPPORT FOR THIS AND IS AVAILABLE FROM 10 JAN. ADVICE ON THIS ON 10TH JAN WOULD BE APPRECIATED IF POSSIBLE. THIS WILL BECOME OUR PRIMARY SYSTEM AS IT IS THE ONLY ONE WITH AVA GPU. A MODEST REDUCTION IN CPU LOAD WILL HELP A LOT AS CURRENTLY WITH HIGHER SETTINGS IS HITTING 100% UTILISATION

3 FEMTO BOLTS WILL BE ATTACHED TO A BACKUP PORTABLE SYSTEM WITH RTX 3060 TI PROVEN TO WORK WITH THE SYSTEM PRIOR TO BETA 7.0 AND RELEASE 7.1.

I’m not sure what you are talking about with the Driver upgrade comment. Can you clarify? There should be no issue with drivers or compatibility between Ada generation graphics, and Femto Bolt and Azure Kinect.

SEE ABOVE

The Femto Bolt uses the same USB3.0 extender cables for data.

For the Femto Bolt, power is run via wall power and cannot be powered by USB like with Azure Kinect.

WE ONLY POWER BY WALL POWER.

The sync cables are different Femto Bolts require Sync Hub Pro and Ethernet cables and adapters for sync. 10 cameras requires 2x sync hub pro to support all 10 sensors. Be sure you have the right sync hardware with your order.

PLEASE ADVISE EXACTLY WHAT IS NEEDED WITH ORDER LINKS

Hope this answers your questions.

IT DOES THANK YOU.

Have a great Xmas break. I am back from 3rd Jan see you on the 10th

Best wishes

Terry

4

Hi Terence

Here are the links for Orbbec Femto Bolt sync hardware

  1. A Orbbec Sync Hub Pro 1x for up to 9 sensor, or 2x for 10x sensors.
  2. A Orbbec Sync Adapter , 1x for each sensor
  3. 30ft Ethernet cable to connect each sensor to the sync hub.
    4.If using 10x sensors, an additional Ethernet cable to bridge sync hubs together.*

I still do not see a description of the driver issue you were mentioning in your response. can you clarify?

5

Ps. The Dell 7780 5000Ada Laptop has 13th Gen i9-13950 HX rather than 14th Gen. Do you think that this will make much of a difference in max CPU utilisation?

6

Thanks James. I must leave the driver issue to a discussion with our tech support on 10th Jan.
Best wishes.
Terry

7

PPS. The laptop uses 2x

8

@Terence We haven’t yet done any head-to-head testing of identical-spec 13th-gen and 14th-gen CPU’s, so it’s tough to answer your question about performance differences definitively. I’ll defer to our technical team to provide any insight, but I assume that with the same number of cores/threads, any differences in performance would come down to clock speed.

9

Thanks Cory.

Is it worth upgrading the current studio rig CPU? It is already processing 10x 1440p @ 30fps with few or no dropped frames. But CPU is almost always around the ceiling of 100% utilisation. The system is already overclocked to a small (to ensure is stability) extent, and Win 10 stripped down as far as possible.

This Tower PC has RTX A5000 not AVA.

Kind regards
Terry

Current vs 14th Gen CPU specs :

Intel® Core™ i9 18 Core Processor i9-10980XE (3.0GHz) 24.75MB Cache

Vs

[
3549018-a.jpg

Intel 24 Core i9 14900KF Raptor Lake Refresh CPU/Processor
scan.co.uk

](https://www.scan.co.uk/products/intel-core-i9-14900kf-s-1700-raptor-lake-refresh-24-cores-32-threads-60ghz-turbo-36mb-cache-125w-ret)

10

Hi Cory

Just a quick heads up for topics for our session on 24th Jan. If you can respond with answers before we can focus in the session on those that need more discussion.

In addition to earlier questions raised:

  1. Sensor positioning. In a recent capture my hair (grey) gave appearance of part of my head missing. It won’t be me captured for Biennale but should there be a second camera overhead? Replacing which one?
  2. Moving Sensors further away from subject to provide more performance space. The raised stage is 2mx2m but if sensors have to be 50cm away from subject for correct focus, this reduces capture footprint to 1m X1m (the case now). Would like to create capture stage in focus area to 1.5 x 1.5m. Am I correct in this assumption about 50cm+ subject distance from sensors for good focus?
  3. Lighting. Low (standard florescent tubes) and fix in post, or get it right with proper lighting (in place) avoiding post? Arcturus are doing post so would prefer they do it.
  4. Hero cameras at higher than 1440p if need to degrade others down from 1440p to 1080p for pc to accommodate them?
  5. Objects included in capture not held by subject. Eg Paint pot and brush on floor. Coiled Rope. etc. Does background removal algorithm in DS release 7.1 and 8.0 beta exclude them? Ideas to resolve if they do?
  6. Best settings for single human capture. Assume person is semi naked and partly painted.
  7. In 5 above colours to avoid? Eg painting body white with black and red body painting made during the capture? Is this ok?
  8. Best length of capture given that dropped frames increase over time. 3-5 mins has been requested. What level of dropped frames per min is acceptable?
  9. Export for Arcturus? OBJ? They are preparing capture for input to Unity project to stream via ano Cloud service to visitor smartphones (Android and iPhone).
  10. I will also deploy streaming to HoloLens2 as I already have this capability. Will I need to Export captures in a different format from that needed by Arcturus for smartphones?
  11. Best method for getting 12 captures to Arcturus, New York without degrading them by sending over the internet (?) Or can this be done without degrading over the internet? How much storage needed? PC has c3.5Tb on D drive dedicated to captures 1Tb on C drive dedicated to applications including DepthKit and Win10.
  12. Following 24th can I send one or two test captures to you to check outcomes before I proceed with full captures for Biennale artists? And Arrange a follow up session for say, Thurs 1st Feb? We Start capturing artists 7/8 Feb. If payment needed please let me know how much? If quid pro quo, we could ensure DepthKit and Scatter are mentioned in Media. Biggest broadcaster in China with 500Million subscribers is coming at the curator’s invitation to feature the Contemporary Artist event.

That’s it for now.

Thanks again Cory.

Kind regards
Terry

11

Thanks Cory
I have just found out that I cannot upgrade my PC tower to 14th Gen.
Kind regards
Terry

12

@Terence - Since this has drifted away from discussion of the Femto Bolt sensor, I am moving the conversation about other topics to this thread, and will continue the discussion there.

13

Are we using star or serial connection?

14

@Terence The Femto Bolt has only one sync connection port, so star-configuration is the only available topology via the Sync Hub Pro.

15

Hi @Terence - Just off of our call I’d like to share the advice for getting started with Femto Bolt here while we polish up the final release and docs to send in the next few days.

For any customers just receiving Femto Bolts, we recommend doing the follow steps to prepare and test your hardware

  • Upgrade all firmware to 1.0.9 - note that firmware upgrades need to be be performed with one camera connected at a time and using the factory supplied cable without any extenders attached
  • Ensure that you can receive a stream from each camera individually using the Orbbec viewer software
  • Setup the cameras with sync and configure the Orbbec Multi-device Sync viewer to verify sync on all cameras.

Attached is an example file that you can start with, just swap out your serial numbers:
MultiDeviceSyncConfig.json (4.1 KB)

1 Like
16

Thanks James
Kind regards
Terry

1 Like
17

Thanks Cory. Noted.
Please advise which of your recommended Data Extension cables you have tested successfully working with the new sensors and which did not.

18

Ps Our recent delivery of the new sensors were all withthe correct firmware.

19

@Terence Is that to say that the sensors shipped from the factory with firmware 1.0.9 preinstalled?

The extenders that we have tested are the StarTech USB3AAEXT10M. We have generally been successful with these, but there seems to be some issue that we’re working with Orbbec to resolve where the sensors occasionally establish a USB 2.1 connection to the PC rather than the correct USB 3.1 connection - More information is available here. As seen in the most recent response at the time of this posting, it seems that this issue isn’t necessarily caused by the sensors, as others have had the same issue when only using the factory USB cable provided with the sensor.

20

Yes. All 10. That’s what we experienced too on our first extension cable. Reverting to 2.1.