Bring-Up Workflow
This guide describes the ordered workflow for commissioning an Agrippa stereo camera system.
Overview
The high-level order is:
- Mechanical assembly
- Electrical and network setup
- Camera configuration
- Lens focus adjustment
- Stereo calibration
- Calibration validation
1. Mechanical assembly
Goals:
- rigidly mount both cameras,
- fix the stereo baseline,
- eliminate mechanical flex,
- avoid cable strain that can twist the optics.
Do not leave adjustable mechanics in the final calibrated configuration unless they can be locked repeatably.
2. Electrical and network setup
Before moving on:
- confirm stable power,
- confirm camera discovery through the intended NIC,
- verify there is no obvious packet loss,
- verify any trigger wiring and isolated I/O assumptions.
3. Camera configuration
Lock these parameters before calibration:
- exposure,
- gain,
- resolution,
- pixel format,
- frame rate,
- any gamma or ISP settings that affect imaging geometry or corner detection.
Calibration is only valid for fixed intrinsics.
4. Focus adjustment
Use the focus command at the intended working distance. Aim for:
- high focus scores in both eyes,
- low mismatch between left and right channels,
- stable exposure and gain during adjustment.
Once focus is correct, lock the lenses mechanically.
5. Stereo calibration
Calibration is performed offline from captured image pairs. The quality of the final result depends more on dataset quality than solver novelty.
Collect:
- 15-20 usable pairs at minimum,
- 25-40 pairs for a stronger solve,
- diverse board positions, tilts, distances, and edge coverage.
Avoid capture sets where every checkerboard is centered, fronto-parallel, or at the same range.
6. Validation
Validate the resulting calibration before depending on it for depth work:
- inspect reprojection error,
- reject obvious outlier pairs,
- confirm epipolar alignment is acceptably small after rectification,
- test real rectified imagery in
stream or one of the depth-preview commands.