Connect my OAK-D Pro PoE to my laptop

YWei

Hi all,

I recently purchased an OAK-D Pro PoE camera and want to connect it directly to my MacBook for flashing and configuration. Since my MacBook doesn't have an Ethernet port, can I use a USB-C-to-Ethernet adapter to establish a direct Ethernet connection between the camera and my laptop?

The camera came with an M12-to-RJ45 cable and an M8 male-to-male cable, but no way to directly connect to my MacBook's USB-C ports.

Is that true I don't need a router or network switch for this direct connection?

And I also like to know will the camera be powered up after connecting to my laptop, without a PoE injector?

I am being totally new to this, so I would appreciate any guidance on the best way to set it up and connect the two devices.

Thank you for your insights!

Cheers,

Austin

jakaskerl

YWei Is that true I don't need a router or network switch for this direct connection?

You need some sort of power delivery to the device. You can use an injector for that.
But yes, you don't need a router or switch for this to work.

https://docs.luxonis.com/projects/hardware/en/latest/pages/guides/getting-started-with-poe/

Thanks,
Jaka

YWei

jakaskerl

Hi Jaka,

Thanks for your reply.

Apart from a PoE injector to power up the camera, do you think I just need a USB-to-ethernet adapter then I can use my laptop to interact with the camera?

Cheers,

Austin

jakaskerl

Hi @YWei
It's recommended to connect the POE device to your PC using physical cables as opposed to WIFI (due to bandwidth). I personally use a docking station which has the ETH port, but I have also used a USB-C to ETH dongle and it worked fine.

Thanks,
Jaka

YWei

Hi jakaskerl

Now I just set up my connection by connecting both PC and OAK D Pro PoE to a PoE switch (as shown below). Howver, when trying to run some demo scripts it keeps showing RuntimeError: No available devices

I have no idea what's going on. Does it mean I need to assign any IPs or something else to do? Have zero knowledge about this aspect 🙁

Cheers,

Austin

jakaskerl

Hi @YWei
The device without DHCP (your case) will fall back to 169.254.1.222. For device discovery to work, your PC has to be on the same subnet. This is usually not a problem since the PC will autoassign itself to that range. But if you have multiple internet adapters (like WIFI) enabled, the PC might be confused where to route the traffic.

Please post the output of ifconfig.

Thanks,
Jaka

danijoss

I'm having the same problem. I can ping the device successfully:

ping -c 4 169.254.1.222

PING 169.254.1.222 (169.254.1.222): 56 data bytes

64 bytes from 169.254.1.222: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=1.326 ms

64 bytes from 169.254.1.222: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.556 ms

64 bytes from 169.254.1.222: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.703 ms

64 bytes from 169.254.1.222: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.649 ms

But if I try:

nc -zv 169.254.1.222 22

nc: connectx to 169.254.1.222 port 22 (tcp) failed: Connection refused

Ifconfig has a bunch of interfaces, but the one that matters is:

en8: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500

options=6464<VLAN_MTU,TSO4,TSO6,CHANNEL_IO,PARTIAL_CSUM,ZEROINVERT_CSUM>

ether c8:4d:44:29:a0:d6

inet6 fe80::20:41de:b1a5:d542%en8 prefixlen 64 secured scopeid 0x19

inet 169.254.52.93 netmask 0xffff0000 broadcast 169.254.255.255

nd6 options=201<PERFORMNUD,DAD>

media: autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex>)

status: active

The depthai viewer sometimes doesn't even try, sometimes it fails with "RuntimeError: Failed to find device after booting, error message: X_LINK_DEVICE_NOT_FOUND"

I have tried the suggestion of : sudo route add -net 169.254 -interface [dongle-interface], with en8 as the interface. GIven that I can ping, that should not be the issue. My injector is a Ubiquiti U-POE-AF PoE Injector, and the network adapter is a cableworks usb-c hub with Gigabit ethernet (https://cablexpert.com/item.aspx?id=12049).

Eventually I want to use the camera with touchdesigner (latest version installed), but I can't even get it to work with the python viewer. NordVPN disabled, all security tools deactivated.

My laptop is an M1pro macbook pro, with latest macos sequoia.

danijoss

Also, I ran this from terminal:

DEPTHAI_LEVEL=DEBUG DEPTHAI_WATCHDOG_INITIAL_DELAY=60000 DEPTHAI_BOOTUP_TIMEOUT=60000 python3 -c "import depthai; print(depthai.Device.getAllConnectedDevices())"

[2025-05-19 12:36:02.029] [depthai] [debug] Python bindings - version: 2.30.0.0 from 2025-03-18 12:45:46 +0100 build: 2025-03-18 12:00:39 +0000

[2025-05-19 12:36:02.029] [depthai] [debug] Library information - version: 2.30.0, commit: e0f6b52d048ef7ceac2ecd44deb2e161dbb97699 from 2025-03-18 12:44:00 +0100, build: 2025-03-18 12:00:38 +0000, libusb enabled: true

[2025-05-19 12:36:02.034] [depthai] [debug] Initialize - finished

[2025-05-19 12:36:02.096] [depthai] [debug] Resources - Archive 'depthai-bootloader-fwp-0.0.28.tar.xz' open: 1ms, archive read: 64ms

[2025-05-19 12:36:02.411] [depthai] [debug] Resources - Archive 'depthai-device-fwp-a62b2ccb0bc493c2fb41694cb81c08887be24c52.tar.xz' open: 1ms, archive read: 380ms

[]

jakaskerl

danijoss
Port 22 is not open. That makes sense. When device is fully booted 11490 and 11491 are open, not sure about the unbooted device.

Nevertheless. Had a similar issue on my MBP as well. Turns out the OS drops your interface if device is connected to an injector and not comms are going through.
When devices moves from "bootloader" state to "booted" (when you run a python script that initializes the device), it reboots. Consequently the comms are down and the network interface is dropped - and it takes too long for it to come back.

Solution? Manually set the IP inside the MB's network settings so the interface persists between reboots as well.

Thanks,
Jaka

danijoss

It still does not work. I put in a manual IP of 169.254.1.10, with subnet mask 255.255.0.0. I can still ping, but the camera is not found by the viewer. Sometimes, e.g. after a computer restart, I get that same error (screenshot). If I quit the viewer and reopen, it simply does nothing at all.

Is there any chance that MacOS Sequoia might do this? Normally, an application that wants to access the LAN will trigger a dialog to allow access to the LAN. This never happened.

jakaskerl

danijoss
Make sure to put the dongle at the top of network service list to prioritize it. Generally, if you can ping it, then it should work.
I have seen that same error in VSC, if under Privacy and Security -> Local network code was disabled. But then ping wouldn't work either.

Thanks,
Jak

danijoss

No change unfortunately. The dongle is top of the list, again I get the same behaviour. It tries to find it on the first attempt after a reboot, I get that X_LINK error. Then, no matter how many times I quit the viewer and relaunch it, there is not even an attempt at a search (the spinning wheel doesn't even appear). Ping always works.

I tried putting the dongle on a different usb port, just in case, but predictably it's still the same.

I tried the camera on a friend's PC, with the same PoE injector, it works fine, so the issue is clearly with MacOS.

The thing is, you can't add apps to the local network tab. Supposedly (I think), the Terminal process doesn't need permissions there. However, maybe Python does, or the Viewer as an app itself. If the OS thinks that the Terminal's ping and depthai are different things, maybe they have different network permissions? I really don't know, I tried everything I could come up with, including chatgpt.

Is there nothing else that can be done to troubleshoot?