The Kinect has just been opened by MS

[Cyberman]

Microsoft just announced an SDK to work with the kinect!

Now we can drive each other nuts with 3d photos and weird gaming interfaces!

I just want to use it for 3d scene creation myself, time to get a kinnect.

Cyb

 

[smcd]

This, I feel, is the correct end-result of "hackers" Not the Sony approach, or even Nintendo's - if the major game console/handheld companies gave out some "homebrew" features and *kept* them in the consoles, piracy would probably not exist to the extent it does. The PS3 was left untouched until they removed the OtherOS, for example. Most "hackers" it seems will not publish exploits if the companies offer some sort of a playground.

 

[Cyberman]

So some people are probably thinking "who cares the kinnect isn't all that cool to mess with on your own"

Well here is a to make you think.

And this didn't take guts but ... it might have helped LOL.

We mustn't forget commercial games such as Marrowind for sexample

Too see what people are doing try Kinect hacks.

Cyb

 

[Porto]

Yep, it's good news.

But I must ask, why this wasn't released from the beginning...

 

[Martin]

I always feel like my Kinect is watching me in a dirty, dirty way everytime I start my Kinect.

It's like it's scanning my body from top to toe. I feel

 

[Cyberman]

The kinnect is out to get you Martin...really it's out to GET you!

Muhahaha (emphasis on the haha part I guess)

I have been looking for the SDK a lot. I suppose I'll use the existing ones instead.

The main issue is dealing with MS BS libraries if you use there SDK. The big thing about that is "It's spying on you" if MS software is involved usually.

Some believe "this is the price too pay" and I ask them "are you daft?" anyhow

Cyb

 

[Cyberman]

I have tested the kinect software with one I borrowed from someone else.

You know curiosity.

First the software is a tad slow under windows. (0.1 FPS was the max LOL). That's with my machine who may be suffering because of old USB support (win2K) but it did work (surprisingly).

It appears to be either inefficient in processing or something like that. It required POSIX thread support. If you aren't familiar with windows and how it supports threads for XP and prior generations it uses a 64 tick per second system and any one thread and suck down the system if you aren't careful. I suspect the use of POSIX thread support was a stop gap solution. I will try it next on my Linux box which is about 16 times the performance of my windows box and likely has fewer thread issues than this thing does.

I believe the kinect itself does little processing but provides data streams via USB. It's a generic USB hub with 3 devices attached. A sound (microphone) a camera device and HID.

The latter is a bit puzzling. Anyhow it seems that a lot of the 3d computation is done in the computer not the kinect. This explains the low cost for the device. A very MS way of doing things I guess.

However the way windows handles threads on my machine might be the other cause.

Most computers running windows 7 have no problem, but then again those are about 4 times more powerful than my machine.

It does work however, which is encouraging. I'm looking to migrate the build too my beagle board and see how it does. Fortunately the Beagle board has a DSP I'll see what I can offload onto the high performance DSP which is specifically setup for video processing. Might make the beagle board much faster using the kinect than my aging windows box.

OpenKinect.org is a good starting place.

If you want You tube stuff goto Kinecthacks.net instead. There are links to source code there as well.

Cyb