Camera for Jetson Tx2 for plant detection

Robotics & Edge Computing Jetson & Embedded Systems Jetson TX2
1

Hi all

I’m looking for a camera, that is compatible with the Jetson Tx2. I’m new into this topic and I’m just about to order the Tx2.

My project concern plant detection in agriculture fields, namely weeds. It is possible to control the height x and angle of attact, from the camera to the ground. It will also be possible to control the light settings if necessary. I know performance and price is closely related, so I will/can not provide spec for fps and resolution, but the higher the better (but I’m not on a big budget (start-up)).

        camera
           |
          x|
           |
           v
          / \ 

      plant   plant

So to the question.
Firstly my own research pointed at
Stereolabs Zed: https://www.stereolabs.com/
and
Intels new Real-sense D435

But the other day, I read this thread:
https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/1005570/jetson-tx2/best-cameras-for-jetson/

This sounds more promising to me, with a camera from eg. Flir (but maybe also more expensive).

According to my case, what would you suggest or can you give me some kind of hint?

Thanks in regard!

Esben Bach-Soerensen

2

Hi ebachcs10, in addition to the ZED which is widely supported, the Jetson Camera Partners should be able to recommend a specific imager/lens for your application with the exposure/white balance controls and other pre-processing that you require, see here:

[b][url]https://developer.nvidia.com/embedded/community/partners[/url][/b]

3

It all depends on what you want to do. The RealSense and Zed are all USB3 cameras. FLIR has USB3 and Ethernet cameras, but also lower-level interface cameras.

Most of the “partners” end up with lower level interfaces, such as CSI, which are NOT plug-and-play. If you go with a CSI camera, you will need special drivers for that particular camera, and those drivers need to be updated for each OS/kernel release, and in turn they depend not only on the camera, but also the carrier board you want. (You need a driver for CSI camera XXX on carrier board YYY) USB and GigE are much better from that point of view.

That being said, I’m using a Zed, and I find that their Jetson SDK is great. The draw-back is that it’s a closed source SDK, and if the Stereolabs company goes away, you have nowhere to turn.

4

MIT guys say that Zed camera is particularly good for 10-20 meters range.
For close range they advise “ASUS Xtion, Microsoft Kinect, or Intel RealSense SR300”, for labelfusion in particular, ranged 1-2 meters.

5

Thank you for all the answers so far, which are very useful for me!

My first thought is to stick with a usb, as I’m still a newcomer in this area. I don’t want to use all my time (at least in the beginning of the project) on special drivers etc :)

6

If you order a devkit it comes with an onboard sensor.

7

Some folks seem to use LIDAR for the purpose: http://www.ra.cs.uni-tuebingen.de/publikationen/2010/weiss2010icmla.pdf
Lasers: IEEE Xplore Full-Text PDF:

8

The Zed is fine in to about a meter. There’s also a newer, smaller version, Zed Mini, which has a narrower stereo separation and thus is intended for shorter range. It also has a built-in IMU.

The structured light cameras (Xtion, RealSense, Kinect) do not work in bright sunlight.

If you want to use the on-board camera, then you need to also move the entire board to where you want the camera angle to be. Plus that’s a single-eye camera with no depth. If that’s all you need, you can use any USB webcam, really. Get one with a big aperture and lens for high quality.

9

Hi ebachs10,

Have you considered camera solutions from e-con systems (https://www.e-consystems.com/), a camera scaling partner of NVIDIA, for your needs? We have both USB as well as MIPI-CSI based camera solutions. Please reach out to sales@e-consystems.com with your requirements and we should be able to help.