Questions about hardware (series 2 and 3)

apirrone

Hello, I have a few questions about your series 2 and upcoming series 3 hardware !

First, about video encoding, I saw on the documentation that there is a limit of 3 parallel encoding streams

(here https://docs.luxonis.com/projects/api/en/latest/components/nodes/video_encoder/)

Will that limitation also be there on series 3 hardware ? We may need to encode 4 1080p h264 streams.

We plan on buying a OAK-SoM Pro S3 to test it. My understanding is that it is compatible with the base board of the OAK-FFC-4P, is that right ?

Also, you say the following in the page about OAK-SoM Pro s3 :

I am not sure I understand what you mean, this board is only for pre-testing the series 3 hardware because it is backward compatible, but in the future we will need to use the MAX version with a different base board ?

We currently use the IMX378W module, but we would need a wider field of view (mainly a wider vertical fov). Do you have any other compatible camera module that would have a wider fov except for arducam with m12 optics ?

Thanks !

Antoine

erik

Hi apirrone ,
I believe the video encoding hardware (silicon) is the same, so same limitations would apply. I'd skip RVC3, and instead either use RVC2, or wait for RVC4 (Q4 early release, more info in coming weeks).
Regarding M12, I'd suggest checking the FFC-IMX477-M12 from here: https://docs.luxonis.com/projects/hardware/en/latest/pages/ffc-cameras/#ffc-camera-modules

apirrone

Hi erik

I actually was able to perform video encoding on 4 1080p streams at the same time (see below) but the cpus seemed to be having a hard time (not very smooth framerate)

Do you think that with the additional computing power of series 3 hardware the encoding procedure would perform better ? Or is it capped by the encoding hardware silicon ?

Regarding M12, our goal is actually to avoid M12 socket if possible 🙂 Do you have (or plan on having) anythin else with a wider vertical FOV than the IMX378-W ?

To give you more context, we need a wide vertical fov in stereo, so we have two options (to the best of our knowledge) :

Two cameras with a wide fov.
Four cameras with narrower fov, with the stereo pairs inclined away from each other, and we stitch the vertical images to get a very wide vertical fov.

Does the second option seem feasible to you ?

We would like to do as much computing as possible on the device, so we have great hopes for your series 3 (and 4 ??) hardware 😃

Thanks !

Antoine

erik

Hi apirrone ,
I just tested it, you are right, there's no limitation for num of streams, we just updated docs (pr here).

Regarding CPUs, it's not due to videoEncoders - you can try linking one cam to 4 encoders (script here: and CPU is low. You can lower cameras 3A fps: https://docs.luxonis.com/projects/api/en/latest/tutorials/debugging/#cpu-usage

Another option would be to order custom CCMs (with desired FOV) from Arducam. Second option would be possible, but likely more complicated.

RVC3 isn't in a good state atm, ISP is quite limited, hopefully RVC4 will be better (wrt features you require).
Thanks, Erik