Glossary
PTP clock sync
Precision Time Protocol — sub-microsecond clock alignment across sensors.
Definition
PTP (Precision Time Protocol, IEEE 1588) synchronizes clocks across devices to sub-microsecond accuracy over a network. In a capture rig it gives every sensor a shared timebase so their timestamps are directly comparable rather than each device’s independent clock.
01
Why it matters
Software timestamps drift and jitter. A shared hardware clock is the foundation that makes a small, measurable cross-stream sync error possible in the first place.
02
How Firsthand handles it
Firsthand runs all sensors in one PTP clock domain and hardware-triggers exposures, then writes int64 nanosecond timestamps per stream.