librealsense: librealsense fails to claim USB interface on MacOS Monterey

The tutorial is ready 😃 I’m describing every step of the process.

https://lightbuzz.com/realsense-macos/

If you like it, please share to help fellow RealSense developers.

I’m glad there’s demand for this. I’ll publish a detailed guide within the next few days 😃

Hi everyone, after discussing the latest reports with my Intel RealSense colleagues, the decision was made to file an official Intel bug report to investigate the issue further. I have added an Enhancement tag to this case to indicate that it should be kept open until the investigation process is completed.

Hi everyone, does anyone known the true reason why sudo execution is now required on MacOS 12? Is this something that we can work on and expect to correct for the future? Having to launch apps using the terminal is kind of a showstopper for a standard app user. Thanks!

OK, it works on Monterey 😄 Here’s proof:

• Supported operating systems: macOS Monterey & Big Sur
• Supported chipsets: Apple Silicon & Intel

@MartyG-RealSense We have released this as part of our skeleton-tracking SDK. RealSense is a first-class citizen and we support it on Windows, Linux, and Mac.

Building RealSense binaries in a way that supports all macOS versions and chipsets is not trivial and requires re-compilation of additional C++ libraries. If anyone’s interested, I can post a detailed tutorial. Just let me know.

I am getting the same error in MacOS Monterey, but I don’t think it is the same as the Monterey USB hub issue.

This code:

import pyrealsense2.pyrealsense2 as rs

ctx = rs.context()
print(len(ctx.devices))

Will print “1” when a RealSense camera is connected, so the python wrapper can tell that a device is connected.

But if I try to read and print the camera’s serial number:

for i in range(len(ctx.devices)):
    sn = ctx.devices[i].get_info(rs.camera_info.serial_number)
    print(sn)

it will fail with RuntimeError: failed to set power state

None of the built example or realsense-viewer will be able to access the device properly.

Under system report MacOS can clearly see that a realsense device is connected under Hardware > USB

Intel(R) RealSense(TM) Depth Camera 455 :

  Product ID:	0x0b5c
  Vendor ID:	0x8086  (Intel Corporation)
  Version:	50.d0
  Serial Number:	110223061847
  Speed:	Up to 5 Gb/s
  Manufacturer:	Intel(R) RealSense(TM) Depth Camera 455 
  Location ID:	0x01210000 / 3
  Current Available (mA):	900
  Current Required (mA):	720
  Extra Operating Current (mA):	0

The device is also visible under Hardware > Camera

Intel(R) RealSense(TM) Depth Camera 455 :

  Model ID:	UVC Camera VendorID_32902 ProductID_2908
  Unique ID:	0x121000080860b5c

Interestingly if I open Apple’s Photobooth App Intel(R) RealSense(TM) Depth Camera 455 is available as an option along with FaceTime HD Camera. When selected it will show the RGB-Infrared stream and the IR projector is on at full power.

To me it seems that MacOS is able to power and access the RealSense camera without issue. There is something that Apple has changed that is causing the RealSense SDK to not work properly. This will likely require a change to the SDK that someone from Intel will need to investigate.

Hi everyone, does anyone known the true reason why sudo execution is now required on MacOS 12? Is this something that we can work on and expect to correct for the future? Having to launch apps using the terminal is kind of a showstopper for a standard app user. Thanks!

Totally agree - as a developer it’s a huge burden. I can’t run Unity in sudo on Mac, so need to create a package every time to run from command line on sudo. As a result, I can’t debug my scripts in Visual Studio. Currently trying to migrate my dev environment to root user to get around this

https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/librealsense

@MartyG-RealSense This is great to hear. Keep in mind that you still need to uninstall and re-install libusb via Brew. Moreover, RealSense apps (including the RealSense Viewer) must run using sudo.

One more thing: Brew builds are not universal, so if you still need to support Apple Silicon and Intel chips with the same binaries, you should follow our installation guide and compile from scratch.

@Dreamcreationman This is not the right place to ask those kind of questions! There are more than 29 people subscribed to this issue to get information about the librealsense problem and everyone gets notified when you write a message about your independent issue with pyrealsense2-macosx. Please open and discuss your issue at the correct repository, which would be: https://github.com/cansik/pyrealsense2-macosx/issues

Hi everyone,

As there is now a clear and detailed installation guide for MacOS Monterey on Intel and M1 Macs, is it okay if this case is now closed as resolved? If any of you have an opinion that it should be kept open, I welcome your input. Thanks!

thanx @cansik – for some reason processing4 (did not test 3) threw the same error in its console as the real sense-viewer. Something along the lines of “could not get power state” and would immediately crash. So i am pretty happy so far as after the firmware upgrade and SKD update the sketches run without any issues so far…

Thanks very much everyone for your reports. I will highlight the issue to Intel.

MacOS 13 could be several months away yet at the time of writing this.

I have updated the prebuilt python package pyrealsense2-macosx to version 2.50.0 with support for Intel and Apple Silicon. If you are interested in the fully automated build script to create pyrealsense2 & python binaries on MacOS BigSur and MacOS Monterey, have a look here: librealsense-python-mac.ps1

The prebuilt packages can be directly installed from PyPI:

pip install pyrealsense2-macosx

Thanks again to @Vangos for his great tutorial that helped me make this happen.

First python build for version 3.6, 3.7, 3.8, 3.9, 3.10 is done. You can download the pre-built wheel packages here: https://github.com/cansik/pyrealsense2-macosx/releases/tag/macosx-v2.50.0

I can only test it on my own M1 Macbook, so would be great if someone could give it a try. Please be aware to run your python script with sudo, otherwise RealSense tells you that no device is connected.

@Vangos Wow, great tutorial and the pre-compiled binary helps for the python wheel package too. Thank you very much, and let’s hope Intel has not given up on RealSense for MacOS completely.

@MartyG-RealSense @hajdebliem Upon doing some further debugging, I strongly doubt it’s a permissions issue.

• I created a project that allows you to switch between a RealSense camera and an OpenCV camera (cv::VideoCapture).
• Then, I gave permissions to the app to use the camera, so macOS Monterey does not complain.
• When using the OpenCV camera, the program works fine.
• If I switch and use the RealSense SDK, then an error is thrown.

After that, I tried to debug the RealSense code a little further. I started by simply executing the following program:

int main()
{
    rs2::context context;
    std::vector<rs2::device> devices = context.query_devices();
    int count = devices.size();

    printf("Connected devices: %d", count);

    return 0;
}

Really simple, huh? The file rs_context.hpp throws an exception in method query_devices():

• Exception type: UNKNOWN
• Exception message: failed to set power state

So, I decided to go rogue and remove the error::handle(e); method call from the operator[] overload in file rs_device.hpp. Turns out now my code correctly returns the number of connected devices! Tried with 1 and 2 devices and worked fine!

However, even though it counts the connected devices, the rs2::device elements of the array are nullptrs.

@MartyG-RealSense Does this information help? Would you like to forward it to your team? I really think it’s something straightforward to fix if Intel engineers are still committed to this project.

As mentioned in https://github.com/IntelRealSense/librealsense/issues/10035#issuecomment-1010324381:

I have a implemented a CI pipeline to build the librealsense2 python library for MacOS (macOS Catalina (10.15), macOS Big Sur (11.0)). Version 2.49.0 worked as expected, but since version 2.50.0 the users and I have the same problem as mentioned in this issue. It seems it is not just a Monterey problem, but general with 2.50.0.

• Reading the current device-count works (tested on BigSur)
• Starting a pipeline leads to a No device connected exception (tested on BigSur)

Also a nightly build (https://github.com/IntelRealSense/librealsense/commit/c94410a420b74e5fb6a414bd12215c05ddd82b69 using the head commit in the librealsense2 lib) did not help fixing this issue. Because of that I have removed the pre-built wheel packages from the repository (https://github.com/cansik/pyrealsense2-macosx/issues/2).

I have been facing the same issue since I updated to macOS Monterey.

The camera appears in the USB list and I can properly use it as a webcam.

@MartyG-RealSense May I first confirm please whether you are using an Intel-based Mac computer or a newer Apple Silicon M1 model.

To avoid spending time on testing different architectures, the chipset is irrelevant to this issue. I have compiled RealSense for Intel (x86_64), Apple Silicon (arm64), and Universal (x86_64 + arm64) and I’ve used it without any problems in Big Sur.

Here’s the test: I created a universal RealSense build on my M1 machine (Monterey). Obviously, it did not work on Monterey. However, when I used that exact same build on an Intel machine (Big Sur), it worked fine.

Same for x86 and ARM builds: they work on Big Sur, but not on Monterey.

Also, I recompiled libusb (latest version) and linked that to RealSense. No luck.

It seems this issue is related to Monterey and power delivery over USB.

@sam598 If the issue was USB then you would not be able to access the camera at all. It appears the issue is with the SDK.

The RealSense SDK uses the sensor in full power. I guess that’s why it requires a dedicated USB-3/C. All other apps (like FaceTime or Photobooth) use RealSense as a webcam, limiting it to 30 FPS.

There are numerous user reports here. So, for now, I tend to agree with @MartyG-RealSense that it’s something Apple should work on. However, I’m keeping the thread alive to ensure Intel engineers will take care of that for version 2.50.

Confirmed the same behavior on both a late 2019 Intel MacBook Pro as well as a late 2021 M1 Pro MacBook Pro.

MacOS Monterey Version 12.0.1 RealSense SDK Version 2.50.0 and FW 5.13.0.50