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Quickstart: your first calibration

This tutorial walks through a complete calibration end to end. It assumes the stack is installed and running.

Work in progress

This page is a scaffold. The detailed, screenshot-driven walkthrough will be filled in as the wizard steps reach their hi-fi passes.

1. Start or load a session​

Open the web app — you land on the Dashboard ("Welcome to the calibration bench"). Nothing in the wizard is reachable yet: every step stays locked until a session exists. Pick one of the two entry modes:

  • New realtime calibration — start the full wizard from scratch. Live capture, and each sweep is recorded to the session folder so it can be replayed and recomputed later.
  • Load from files (in development) — open an existing session folder; the app reads the artifacts already there (camera videos, board, results) and derives the wizard state so you can recompute or resume.

Once a session is created or opened, the wizard rail unlocks and follows the persisted step.

→ Details: Start or load a session

2. Define a board — Target Config​

Go to Target Config. Set up the calibration board (ChArUco is recommended). The board's geometry and scale must match the physical board you print. You can use a single board for both intrinsic and extrinsic — the extrinsic step inherits the intrinsic board by default — or define two distinct boards. This is the first step: Camera Setup stays locked until the intrinsic board is defined (board-first).

→ Details: Calibration board

3. Configure your cameras — Camera Setup​

Go to Camera Setup. The service discovers connected USB cameras and shows a live preview for each.

→ Details: Configure cameras

4. Intrinsic calibration (camera by camera)​

For each camera, move the board through the field of view while live overlays show coverage and per-view reprojection error. Each sweep is recorded, then a Prepare / replay step lets you review the recording and tune what the compute uses before solving — trim the clip (start/end), set a sampling stride (1 frame every N), and cap the number of frames kept — then compute and inspect the results.

→ Details: Intrinsic calibration

5. Extrinsic calibration & 3D review​

Present the board so pairs of cameras see it simultaneously. As with intrinsics, a Prepare / replay step lets you scrub the synchronized frame groups side by side and tune the compute (sampling stride, minimum shared views) before solving. Poses are chained from an anchor camera and refined with bundle adjustment. Finally, inspect the reconstructed rig in the 3D view — the closing sub-step of extrinsics.

→ Details: Extrinsic calibration

6. Export​

Export your calibration — Caliscope-native TOML and/or engine-ready JSON (three.js, Blender, Unity, Unreal).

→ Details: Export

You're done

You now have a full intrinsic + extrinsic calibration, exported to the convention your target needs. See the Calibration output files reference for the exact fields.