Absolute timing NatNet

NatNet, VRPN, TrackD, and Plugins
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NathanielTagg
Posts: 4
Joined: Wed Dec 21, 2022 8:42 am

Absolute timing NatNet

Post by NathanielTagg »

Hi,
I'm just getting started with our OptiTrack systems. We are going to want to correlate data taken with the mocap rig with external sensor data. Timing precision of ~1 ms is probably good enough for us.

My plan was to stream NatNet data to a custom app that would also integrate data from 3rd party cameras and ROS messages. However, I can't figure out how to get the absolute time from the NatNet packages. The fTimestamp element seems to be time-from-Motive-startup. This would be fine if I knew what time of day (seconds since epoch or whatever) that Motive started up, but that doesn't seem to be present in the API.

Buying hardware for this seems absurd; we don't need very fine timing and NTP is probably sufficient to get the systems synced.

Any suggestions how to do the absolute timing?
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