Cameras drop offline when triggering shoot

#1

I have a 64 camera setup for 3D scanning. There are 3 remote nodes of Capture Code 4 running on 3 Raspberry PI under Linux. The master node is running on a Windows 10 PC.
The remote node and the master node are on a dedicated private network.

When I trigger a shoot to fire all cameras, often between 4 and 8 cameras suddenly report a status of “Lost”. Often the “Lost” camera will re-connect on their own and will transfer the images to the host but more often than, not all the camera will transmit their images, even if the status indicates that all 64 cameras are connected.

I have discovered that if I continuously hit the “Detect” button, more of the cameras will transmit and if I catch the transfer at the right time all camera will transfer their images.

Is there a way to continue polling the cameras for a longer time to see if that will capture the images of the cameras that dropped offline, Alternatively is there a way to force all the images to be transferred after the transfer completes

1 Like
#2

Michael,
I would strongly suggest checking the power supply to the cameras.
Sometimes simply adding a capacitor to the dc line will solve the issue.

#3

Thanks for this suggestion. I will give this a try. In the meantime do you know a way that I can force the cameras to push the last capture to the host node. I sometime see that the transfer looks like it has finished but the starts again and transfers a few of the images that were missed. For example it will do 45 transfers, then start again and do 12 more and then again transfer 8.

#4

Hi Michael,

I do not use smart shooter with my 64 cameras rig, thus my knowledge on this transfer matter is limited.

We use smart shooter for its (as far I know) unique feature of recording and downloading video files automatically.

However, when we had similar problems of “hiccups” in our file transfers and camera disconnection, they were another symptom of poor power supply to the cameras.

We use very powerful power supplies (DC 8V 50A) for every 8 cameras. However, our disconnection and files transfer problems were only solved when I monitored the DC line with a oscilloscope and could clearly see the current drop. Adding capacitors to our DC supply system solved the issue.