Hi, my robot is making noises similar to that decsribed in Stretch suddenly making noise. I have emailed support, but wanted to get further clarification/reassurance on whether or not I should continue working with Stretch until I hear back from support?
Thanks!
I also experience this infrequently. Usually it just requires a slight physical adjustment of the camera head, but I see how this could be a problem in a real world deployment scenario.
The noise described in the linked issue comes from the small fan at the bottom of the head camera module. It can be created either by a small amount of debris impeding the smooth motion of the fan, or by wear on the bearing inside the fan itself. It can be solved by removing the shell on the side of this module to inspect the fan for debris or damage, and removing or replacing it if necessary. We can provide a simple guide for this repair on request.
The purpose of this fan is to provide some additional airflow around the RealSense camera module for cooling purposes. In practice, we have not seen overheating-related issues even with this fan removed or disabled. If you are encountering this noise with your robot, I would typically recommend removing this fan entirely. A replacement can always be added if in the future you find that your application can lead to thermal-related shutdowns of this module. There is no real danger to using the robot while the noise is occurring, but the sound can definitely be annoying.
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