Connect cameras and sensors

You can connect various sensors and cameras to your Beebox to use live video feeds and live sensor data rather than prerecorded video and sensor data.

You can connect cameras ( USB and GigE), lidar, and radar sensors to run with the image. Here's what supported with this reference image. After you connect your sensors to the BeeBox, you must make configuration changes. Depending on the sensors you connect, custom SLM and sensor configuration files may need to be created. For more information, see the “Configure sensors and cameras on the reference image” section. in this chapter.

Connecting USB cameras

You can connect USB cameras to your Beebox. Because the Beebox has only three USB ports, you require a USB 3.0 Hub when you want to connect more than two cameras. Most USB 3.0 hubs run at 1Gbps, so you can only connect three cameras to it when you want to run 720p video at 30 frames per second (fps). Because you already have three cameras on your hub and have potentially maximized its 1 Gbps bandwidth, if you want to connect other non-camera sensors, we recommend that you connect another USB 3.0 hub to the other USB port on the Beebox to extend the number of USB connections. The following sections describe the necessary changes you need to make based on the camera configuration you choose:

To use four cameras connected with a USB hub: Here's what four cameras with a USB looks like with a hub. In this case, since 720p at 30 fps is required, you can connect up to three cameras to the USB 3.0 hub, but then you must connect the fourth camera to another USB port on the board.

Figure 1. BeeBox connected to four USB cameras

Configure GigE cameras

You can connect GigE cameras (also known as network cameras and IP cameras) that are compliant to the GigE Vision standard. The camera doesn't need to be connected to your target, but it must be connected to the same network as your target.

Configure lidar, and radar

You can connect lidar, radar, and radar to the Beebox using and CAN-to-USB adapter or using USB directly. You may need to use a USB 3.0 hub to extend the number of USB ports when you want to connect multiple sensors to the Beebox.