Regarding the L515 Hardware

[tquin-source]

What has your experience been with the quality and reliability of the L515 hardware?

I ask this because I have personally owned two L515s and have had access to two more through a former job. Of the four total, three are now not fully functioning, with the same failure across all three: Dead depth sensor (other sensors still work). All units were only used indoors, on a flat table and only ever transported in the original packaging.

Of the two that I personally owned, I experienced the issue with the first one within months of using it. It was still under one year of the purchase date when I decided to RMA it, and was able to receive a new unit. That was now 2+ years ago, and I have recently experienced the same failure with the newer unit, and can longer RMA it. As for the other devices, I don't know what my former employer decided to do with them.

I should also say that in all cases, I tried thoroughly to debug the issues with multiple versions of the RealSense SDK and device firmware across different systems, OSs, ports and USB cables. With some configs I managed to get the RealSense Viewer to recognize the device and stream data from all the other sensors, but could never get the depth sensor working again.

I know that the L515 has now long been in EOL, and I'm not expecting any recourse here, but it is still very disappointing that the key feature of an expensive device has become non functional.

As far as I can tell, Intel has not made any statement about the L515 hardware. This leaves me wondering if I am just incredibly unlucky, or if there is in fact a quality issue with the hardware.

Any input is appreciated.