ifm3d

Library and utilities for working with ifm pmd-based 3D ToF Cameras.

Current Revision

A full software compatibility matrix, including older releases, is available here.

Organization of the Software

The ifm3d software is organized into modules, they are:

As of version 0.9.0, we have removed the viewer sub-command from the ifm3d command line tool (part of the tools module). The objective was to lessen the dependencies for the core library. However, a clone of the pre-0.9.0 viewer is available in its own repository: ifm3d-pcl-viewer.

Installing the Software

Binaries for ifm3d are available on a few supported platforms. Instructions for each now follow.

Linux

Snap Application

The ifm3d command line utility and viewer tool are available as a snap in the Snapcraft application store. Snapcraft supports most major Linux distributions. The storefront page for ifm3d is: https://snapcraft.io/ifm3d

To install the package on a snapd enabled system:

$ sudo snap install ifm3d

After installation, the commands ifm3d and ifm3d.viewer should be available.

NOTE: This option is a convenient way to install and update tools and utilities for working with ifm Cameras. This option is not suitable for developers hoping to target the ifm3d API and shared libraries. Developers should opt for standard debian packages, or building from source.

Ubuntu Linux via Apt (amd64/arm64)

We provide apt repositories for the following Ubuntu Linux distributions and architectures:

Add the repository to your sources.list:

$ sudo sh -c 'echo "deb https://nexus.ifm.com/repository/ifm-robotics_ubuntu_$(lsb_release -sc)_$(dpkg --print-architecture) $(lsb_release -sc) main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ifm-robotics.list'

Add the public key for the repository:

$ sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://ha.pool.sks-keyservers.net:80 --recv-key 8AB59D3A2BD7B692

Install the software:

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install ifm3d-camera \
                       ifm3d-framegrabber \
                       ifm3d-swupdater \
                       ifm3d-image \
                       ifm3d-opencv \
                       ifm3d-pcicclient \
                       ifm3d-tools \
                       ifm3d-python3 \
                       ifm3d-pcl-viewer \

Linux for Tegra

Linux for Tegra is an NVIDIA Linux distribution for the Jetson family of GPU SoC systems. NVIDIA distributes a software package called JetPack with various utilities and libraries optimized for the target hardware. There are a few pakages which override the core Ubuntu packages (OpenCV as the primary example). We provide alternate apt repositories for ifm3d built on top of the JetPack libraries rather than the Ubuntu libraries.

Add one of the following repositories based on your desired JetPack/L4T release:

Jetpack 4.4:

$ sudo sh -c 'echo "deb https://nexus.ifm.com/repository/ifm-robotics_l4t_jetpack_4_4_arm64 melodic main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ifm-robotics.list'

Jetpack 4.3:

$ sudo sh -c 'echo "deb https://nexus.ifm.com/repository/ifm-robotics_l4t_jetpack_4_3_arm64 melodic main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ifm-robotics.list'

Add the public key for the repository:

$ sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://ha.pool.sks-keyservers.net:80 --recv-key 8AB59D3A2BD7B692

Install the software:

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install ifm3d-camera \
                       ifm3d-framegrabber \
                       ifm3d-swupdater \
                       ifm3d-image \
                       ifm3d-opencv \
                       ifm3d-pcicclient \
                       ifm3d-tools \
                       ifm3d-python3 \
                       ifm3d-pcl-viewer \

ROS/ROS2

For users interested in using our ROS bindings, ifm3d and ifm3d-ros are both available in the ROS distribution for Kinetic and Melodic (Noetic coming shortly).

$ sudo apt install ros-kinetic-ifm3d

or

$ sudo apt install ros-melodic-ifm3d

For users interested in using our ROS2 bindings, binaries will be included (starting with dashing) very soon. For now, packages must be built from source. Do not use the debian mirror for ifm3d since (depending on version) ROS2 ships parallel versions of some core libraries (OpenCV, PCL) as compared with standard Ubuntu. ifm3d must be built against the proper dependencies.

Windows

Pre-built binaries are not yet available. For now we recommend manually compiling for the target MSVC/SDK versions according to the building on windows instructions.

Other platforms

If you are running on a platform we did not mention above, the links below will assist you in building from source code. Alternatively, if you are simply looking to do a quick evaluation of an ifm3d supported sensor we recommend either the Snapcraft option discussed above, or Docker containers.

Additional Resources

• Building from source on Linux
• Building on Windows
• Building and using Python bindings
• Basic library usage
• ifm3d command line tool
• Configuring Your Camera
• Viewing the Point Cloud
• Implementing your own image container
• ROS
• ROS 2
• Troubleshoot
• Computing Cartesian data off-board using the ifm3dpy Python bindings.

Known Issues, Bugs, and our TODO list

Please see the Github Issue Tracker.

LICENSE

Please see the file called LICENSE.

Changes between ifm3d 0.17.0 and 0.18.0

• Support for latest O3D3XX firmware (1.30.5309)
• Support for latest O3X firmware (1.0.156)
• Deprecated ROS-specific apt repositories
• Deprecated python2 support
• Support for Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa
• Packaged and released ifm3d as a Snap
• Added support for Ubuntu ARM64
• Added support for L4T (Linux for Tegra) JetPack 4.3 and 4.4
• Improved Windows build instructions
• Created GitHub Actions CI workflows
• Bugfixes:
  • #190 - Added missing include for Windows build

Changes between ifm3d 0.16.0 and 0.17.0

• Reverted changes in 0.16.0 (FrameGrabberUdp – No viable path to UDP implementation in F/W)
• Bugfixes
  • Issue with libcurl usage on 32bit targets
  • Corrected minimum firmware version required for inverse intrinsics
  • Corrected handling of spurious wakes in FrameGrabber
  • Fixed ComputeCartesian python unit test to properly blank out invalid pixels
  • Changed build Dockerfiles to use pip for numpy/pytest
  • Fixed race condition in PCICClient unit tests
  • Changed setup.py to honor the environment variables per the Windows installation instructions
  • Updated installation documentation for Windows

Changes between ifm3d 0.15.1 and 0.16.0

• Created new framegrabberudp module for consuming data over UDP interface

Changes between ifm3d 0.15.0 and 0.15.1

• Minor updates to allow for cross-compiling ifm3d for the O3D3XX
• PCIC timeout issue fixed

Changes between ifm3d 0.14.1 and 0.15.0

• Added Interface for getting json_model from O3D3xx devices.

Changes between ifm3d 0.14.0 and 0.14.1

• Fixes to how timeouts are handled in swupdate module
• Updated embedded JSON library to 3.6.1, single-header.

Changes between ifm3d 0.13.0 and 0.14.0

• New module: swupdater – utilities for updating camera firmware
  • Ported functionality from swupdate command into its own library for programmatic consumption.
  • Updated certain semantics of the swupdate command in the tools module to match those of the other ifm3d tools commands
    • Updated command line switch naming to match other ifm3d tools:
      • check subcommand now invoked by -c or --check
      • reboot subcommand now invoked by -r or --reboot
    • file subcommand will now test for recovery and automatically reboot the device into recovery as needed.
• Disabled framegrabber’s InverseIntrinsicParamSchema test due to suspected false failures. Test case will be investigated and re-opened in a future release.
• Fixed issues with unit test scripts on Windows
• Fixed Windows build documentation
  • Added BUILD_SHARED_LIBS definition to glog to address issues with logging to STDERR in Windows binaries
  • Parameterized the CMake generator for easier building when multiple versions of MSVC are installed concurrently

Changes between ifm3d 0.12.0 and 0.13.0

• Honor semantics of CMake’s BUILD_SHARED_LIBS flag (ON by default). Setting to off will build and link against ifm3d modules as static libraries.
• New module: pybind11 – Python bindings for the the C++ API

Changes between ifm3d 0.11.2 and 0.12.0

• Fixes to build infrastructure in support of windows unit tests
• Added support to retrieve the inverse intrinsic parameters from O3D3xx cameras

Changes between ifm3d 0.11.1 and 0.11.2

• Bugfix for #111, moved a log message in framegrabber to IFM3D_PROTO_DEBUG to keep noise level low when running an O3X for extended periods of time.
• Changed flagging bad pixels to always be 0 regardless of data type. Users could always consult the confidence image themselves and discriminate between a true 0 (not possible) and a bad pixel which they could then transform to nan or whatever other sentinel makes sense for their application.

Changes between ifm3d 0.11.0 and 0.11.1

• Bugfix for #103 header is not in the correct format when make check is executed against FW 1.6.2114
• Bugifx for #107 Allows OpenCV module headers to be included in more than one translation unit thus avoiding violation of ODR.
• The image and opencv modules now flags bad pixels at the driver-level

Changes between ifm3d 0.10.0 and 0.11.0

• Added a jitter subcommand to ifm3d
• Added support to retrieve the intrinsic parameters from O3D3xx cameras

Changes between ifm3d 0.9.3 and 0.10.0

• Adds support for setting the IFM3D_SESSION_ID environment variable for establishing edit sessions with the camera using a known ID.
• Sessions are now explicitly cancellable if the session ID is known.
• Some session management optimizations in FromJSON which should result in incremental speedups in importing JSON configurations to the camera.

Changes between ifm3d 0.9.2 and 0.9.3

• Added build instructions how to switch between Release and Debug for Windows builds
• Added Troubleshoot guide
• Added Opencv module build instruction for windows
• Added minimum MSVC version requirement
• Added prerequisite packages list for building ifm3d
• Changed warning message in framegrabber from WARNING to IFM3D_TRACE severity level
• Updated swupdate command with –check (recovery mode check) and -r (reboot to productive mode)

Changes between ifm3d 0.9.1 and 0.9.2

• Added Support for the Ubuntu 18.04
• Added glog support in the cmake config files

Changes between ifm3d 0.9.0 and 0.9.1

• Removed some additional Boost dependencies

Changes between ifm3d 0.8.3 and 0.9.0

• Version number handling is now done in the cmake project command in the top-level CMakeLists.txt file
• Dropped support for Ubuntu 14.04
• Increased cmake requirements to 3.5
• Increaded compiler requirements to C++14
• Moved examples module into new project ifm3d-examples
• Moved viewer sub-command out of the ifm3d project. This is to decrease the PCL dependencies (see Issue #42). A new project will be created in support of this viewer application: ifm3d-pcl-viewer
• Updated JSON parsing library to 3.1.2
• By default, pcicclient module is now OFF.
• Pixel-parsing framework has been significantly refactored. Sub-system specific docs for image container implementers have been provided in the doc folder.
• Updated the ImageBuffer to conform to the new pixel-publishing architecture.
• Initial implementation of an OpenCV-only (i.e., no PCL) image container. This is the opencv module of the ifm3d project.
• Added a passwd subcommand to ifm3d

Changes between ifm3d 0.8.2 and 0.8.3

• Fixed a cmake regression regarding -std=c++11 flags passed to the compiler; surfaces on old versions of cmake, i.e., in Ubuntu 14.04

Changes between ifm3d 0.8.1 and 0.8.2

• Patch to windows build
• Better semver parsing of camera firmware

Changes between ifm3d 0.8.0 and 0.8.1

• Reverted Windows build changes due to how it broke packaging on Linux

Changes between ifm3d 0.7.0 and 0.8.0

• Illumination temperature is registered to frame data

Changes between ifm3d 0.6.0 and 0.7.0

• Added timestamping of image buffers
• Added support for setting/getting time on O3D cameras
• Added support for setting temporary application parameters. Please note, that if the device does not support this, it may “fail silently”, so, a closed-loop check by the user is recommended.

Changes between ifm3d 0.5.0 and 0.6.0

• Added the pcic client feature from libo3d3xx
• Added the ability to dump on-camera tracelogs including an interface to this capability via the trace subcommand to the ifm3d command-line tool.

Changes between ifm3d 0.4.0 and 0.5.0

• Added swupdate subcommand in the tools module
• Added image module support to Windows build

Changes between ifm3d 0.3.3 and 0.4.0

• Added modules/tools/contrib with bash completions for ifm3d

Changes between ifm3d 0.3.2 and 0.3.3

• Windows build support (should have been a bump to 0.4.0)

Changes between ifm3d 0.3.1 and 0.3.2

• CMake build scripts now look for opencv in tools module since the image buffer header includes an opencv header

Changes between ifm3d 0.3.0 and 0.3.1

• Fixed regression on 14.04 - no compiler support for std::put_time (#3)

Changes between ifm3d 0.2.0 and 0.3.0

• Support for NTP (on O3X)
• Added simple viewer sub-command to the ifm3d command-line program. This viewer will render the point cloud and color each pixel with the normalized amplitude value registered to that point.

Changes between ifm3d 0.1.0 and 0.2.0

• Added software trigger support to O3X
• Added support for ifm Vision Assistant compatible import/export functions for O3X cameras
• Optimization to ifm3d cmd line tool when passed either --help or version. It will no longer try to connect to the device first, which makes this much more responsive and convenient for when no h/w is plugged in.
• Added the ability to explicitly choose OpenCV 2.4 or OpenCV 3 at cmake/compile time.
• Modifications to enable the library to build under Ubuntu 14.04 (C++11 instead of C++14 and gcc 4.8. Big thanks to @aaronhoy at Fetch Robotics for his work
• Added a new build-time utility ifm3d-dpkg-deps.py to auto-generate debian dependencies for the binary packages. This is needed because, for how we are building multiple shared libraries across multiple debian packages, cmake’s stanard wrapper to dpkg-shlibdeps does not work for us (for several reasons).

This file has started tracking ifm3d at 0.1.0

• Initial (alpha) release