Setting up Kinect Sensor Device with Windows PC
Dated back to the time of Imagine cup 2011 in which they announced all the finalists will get Kinect Sensor device back. They just keep their own word and give us at the end of final round held in New York, USA in mid July 2011.
After got back to Thailand, I have no way or no sort of passion just yet to unbox it and plugging in the device to my Nvidia PC.
Not anyway, today I just got it working although with the first harder attempt due to installing a hacking version of pure OpenNI + PrimeSense driver instead of beta version coming from official website of kinectforwindows.org. I warned you to read this post entirely before starting to install on your own, I remind you this in case I don’t want to waste your time ;)
You now what, with the purpose of doing conference call via Skype with my colleagues tonight with the fact that my mic has gone back to the old home, so I need a mic immediately in which I realize it’s all there all along, Kinect Sensor.
Let’s see what I have done hacking this stuff (not sort of hacking just yet, but we will be there).
I read a first article from my friend (though we both are the Imagine Cup attendees in Imagine Cup 2011, I wish I know him before I’m starting to hack around into Kinect Sensor device. His name is Vangos Pternes.
Now i’m starting to unbox Kinect Sensor Device.
A nice black color shining through, finally hit my eyes. This is a big time !
Unboxed it, and we got the following stuff.
- Manual document + 1 Bochure for quick how-to guide on installing with XBox 360/S
- Bochure ads for XBox live + XBox live Gold benefit
- Free copy of Kinect Adventures ! for XBox 360
- Kinect Sensor device attached with long USB-cable + Power Adapter
- Additional usb hub cable
I follow the step in the link above. I did it for two times after seeing the updated post from the author if cannot make the device work. You need to scroll down to the bottom of the page.
Then test out with a sample application, this is great !!
[Turning Point]
Although I have test it via Skype, nonetheless the audio system doesn’t work. So I research through the Internet again, and finally found out there’s actually a version dedicated for Windows on the official website http://kinectforwindows.org/download/ itself. It’s version 1.0.0.45 beta and the next commercial and officially for Windows will come out really soon prior to the announcement of official development blog of kinect here.
Just download 32-bit version of Kinect SDK (it included API, drivers, and sample codes) along with additional prerequisite of Speech Recognition Packages + DirectX SDK on the left side if you want to try out this kind of feature.
After completely installed the Kinect SDK. I tested its audio system with Skype immediately.
Call to Echo test service as usual, and start to speak.
BOOM !! It works like a charm.
Although the video system cannot be detected at this stage by Skype, I already researched this sort but not test it yet though. It needs a hacking program to pass out the accepted data in which Skype need, so it usually involves with a formatting and setting up data for Skype application. You could see it here.
Next thing I tried is a Skeleton Viewer Sample.
You could notice that there’s no skeleton at the middle windows, don’t worry. I did it mistakenly as we have to be reasonable far away from the Kinect Sensor (about 3-4 foot). See the correct experiment below.
After walked back to another side of the room, I can see its skeleton here.
One last shot is to test the full-featured application included with the Kinect SDK, this tests out the gestures, skeleton tracking, voice recognition (you need to install those prerequisite packages I mentioned earlier). Cool !
That’s all for Kinect hacking #0 today.
Now, I can happily do conferencing with my colleagues and the next wish-list to hacking out is to make video system works with Skype itself.
This will be great for sure !
Edited:
8 Nov 2011
It’s a bit of trading-off deciding to use either OpenNI or official Kinect SDK, see some thoughts over comparison of them here. In addition, OpenNI lacks of audio support and this is a big blow if you use Kinect Sensor device as a mic.
Now I planned to install both version of SDK but mainly focus on OpenNI as it’s less restrictive over license to be use in Commercial Software. You can see how to select particular version of driver to be used at the bottom of this link.
9 Nov 2011
I have tested installing both version of drivers/SDK (OpenNI and Kinect SDK), I can be able to use skype and run OpenNI-based demo app without a need to entirely switch to another one.
