Can I use the ZED without CUDA?

The USB 3.0 ZED cameras (ZED 2i, ZED Mini, and the legacy ZED and ZED 2) are UVC (USB Video Class) compliant, so you can capture the side-by-side left and right video stream on Windows, Linux, and macOS without the ZED SDK and without CUDA.

To access the camera on Linux without CUDA, including the IMU and the other sensors, you can use our open-source zed-open-capture library. In this case, depth information must be computed with your own stereo matching algorithm.

However, the ZED SDK requires an NVIDIA® GPU with CUDA to compute depth, positional tracking, spatial mapping, and the AI modules in real time on the host device.

Note: the GMSL2 cameras (ZED X, ZED X Mini, ZED X Nano, ZED X One) are not UVC devices; they require an NVIDIA® Jetson™ platform with a ZED Link capture card or a ZED Box, and the ZED X Driver.