Operating temperature

OAK4

OAK4 cameras (based on RVC4) are designed for industrial environments with changing thermal conditions.
As described in the OAK4 climate/vibration testing blog, both OAK4-D and OAK4-S were validated in pre-production climate testing.

Temperature Results

Across OAK4 climate validation, the following outcomes were reported:

Climate testing followed industrial environmental test methods (IEC 60068 family).
Performance remained stable during and after temperature variation testing.
Calibration remained stable, including after repeated disassembly/reassembly cycles.
No hardware degradation was observed during the validation campaign.
OAK4 operating range for full-system deployment is -20°C to +50°C.

Reports:

OAK

OAK devices, based on RVC2, are rated for industrial use and have operating temperature of -40°C to 105°C, while other components have a higher temperature range.

Max temperature

In the general use case at a 25°C ambient, the chip running at full power (i.e. worst-case heat generation) resides at around 70°C maximum, which sets the thermal margin to a minimum of 35°C.Since devices generate about 45°C in worst-case, this means the maximum ambient temperature should theoretically be 60°C (105°C-45°C=60°C).

OAK-D-Lite max temperature

As we wanted to make OAK-D-Lite as small as possible, we had to use a smaller heatsink. This means the maximum ambient temperature is about 40°C.

Test	Ambient [°C]	VPU [°C]	HS-CPU [°C]	HS [°C]
Test 1	30	87	71.5	67
Test 2	35	94	77	73
Test 3	40	100	88	78
Test 4	50	/	/	/
Test 5	50	112	95	90

Legend:

Ambient temperature means the temperature of the air around the device
VPU is the temperature of the RVC2 (as reported by depthai)
HS-CPU is the temperature of the enclosure where VPU is located
HS is the temperature of the enclosure on the opposite side of the VPU

Tests 1-4 were running all 3 cameras at 30FPS, stereo depth, NN (mobilenet), and video encoding, so the maximum workload possible. As test 4 resulted in a crash of the device (at 125°C VPU temperature), test 5 was done without video encoding (only NN, stereo depth, and 3 cameras at 30FPS).

Min temperature

While the RVC2 SoC has the lowest operating temperature of -40°C, we have only tested our devices at the lowest ambient temperature of -25.1°C and they worked as expected. Minimum temperature would depend on the computational workload, as the VPU would generate more heat when running at full power, which would heat up the device.Note that Pro versions (OAK-D Pro, OAK-D Pro PoE) have on-board IR laser dot projector that has an operating temperature range of 10°C - 60°C (absolute limit 0°C - 80°C). If you would like to use Pro devices below 0°C, we would suggest running the device (without projector) for a few minutes so the device heats up, which would also heat up the laser projector, hopefully above 10°C.

CCM heating

CCM (Compact Camera Module) are the modules that are integrated into the OAK cameras. OAK-D has 3 CCMs, 2x for stereo pair, and in the middle is the RGB camera. CCMs themselves have different operating ranges and also some have lower thermal noise than others (eg. on OAK Lite cameras, those CCMs have worse thermal noise).

We have done some quick testing on CCM heating with different sensors; IMX582, IMX214, OV9282, IMX378.

Sensor	Max temp [°C]	Temp diff [°C]
IMX582	64°C	30°C
IMX214	62°C	29°C
OV9282	50°C	13°C
IMX378	46°C	12°C

Temp diff is the difference between the ambient temperature and the temperature of the CCM.

Command used for testing

We have tested thermals of our devices with max load, and you can achieve that by using the depthai_demo:

Command Line

1python3 depthai_demo.py -sub -lrc -rgbr 2160 --report cpu -enc color -encout /dev/null

This command has the maximum power consumption, therefore the devices have the highest heat output.Note the framerate of the RGB camera is set to 30 (-rgbf 30). If it would be set any higher, it would be bottlenecked by the neural network.

Results of our tests

All devices were tested in an ambient temperature of 18°C to 20°C.Test on the OAK-D-PCBA - rear thermal plate with black anodizing and Laird HD320 TIM:

Heatsink max temperature: 43°C
Die max temperature: 60°C

Test on the OAK-1-PCBA with the Tianmai 6.5W/K TIM for both the front heatsink and the MX. TMA-6518 (0.5mm) for the MX and the TMA-6500 (2mm) for the front were used. This test was with the BW machined heatsink.

Heatsink max temperature: 61°C
Die max temperature: 73°C

Tests for OAK-1:

6535 back TIM only:
- Die max temperature: 78°C
- Rear heatsink max temperature: 62°C
- Front heatsink max temperature: 60°C
6510 front + 6535 back TIM:
- Die max temperature: 70°C
- Rear heatsink max temperature: 59°C
- Front heatsink max temperature: 60°C
Test with T1 OAK-1 sample:
- Rear heatsink max temperature: 61°C
- Front heatsink max temperature: 63°C
- Die max temperature: 73°C

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