Kinect Hacks: Tips & Tools for Motion and Pattern Detection

by Jared St. Jean

Overview

Create your own innovative applications in computer vision, game design, music, robotics, and other areas by taking full advantage of Kinect’s extensive interactive, multi-media platform. With this book, you get a step-by-step walkthrough of the best techniques and tools to come out of the OpenKinect project, the largest and most active Kinect hacking community.

Learn dozens of hacks for building interfaces that respond to body movements, gestures, and voice, using open source toolkits such as openFrameworks, the Processing IDE, and OpenKinect driver library. Whether you’re an artist, designer, researcher, or hobbyist, this book will give you a running start with Kinect.

• Set up a development environment in Windows 7, Mac OSX, or Ubuntu
• Build special effects apps with tools such as Synapse and Cinder
• Create gestural interfaces to integrate and control digital music components
• Capture the realistic motions of a 3D model with NI mate, Blender, and Animata
• Design gesture-based games with the ZigFu SDK
• Recreate the dimensions of any room in realtime, using RGBDemo
• Use gestures to navigate robots and control PC interfaces

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781449315207
Publisher:	O'Reilly Media, Incorporated
Publication date:	11/26/2012
Pages:	277
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Jared St. Jean lives in Toronto, Ontario and is the Application
Services Manager at web.net (http://web.net/), one of the leaders in delivering open source websites and web-enabled applications to social enterprises. Jared is the founder, writer and web administrator for developkinect.com, a community driven site aimed at promoting and assisting all areas of programming and development for the Microsoft Kinect sensor. He is also a video game enthusiast who has been covering all aspects of the gaming industry for the Dashhacks Network.

Table of Contents

Preface vii

1 Getting Up and Running 1

How the Kinect Works 1

How the Kinect Was Hacked 3

Choose a Framework and Driver 4

Hack 01 Install OpenNI, SensorKinect, and NITE for Windows 7 5

Hack 02 Install OpenNI, NITE, and SensorKinect for OS X 7

Hack 03 Install OpenNI, NITE, and SensorKinect for Ubuntu 9

Hack 04 Install libfreenect for Mac OS X 14

Hack 05 Install libfreenect for Ubuntu 15

Hack 06 Install libfreenect for Windows 7 16

Hack 07 Install the Kinect for Windows SDK 21

2 Programming Options 25

Hack 08 Get to Know openFrameworks 26

Hack 09 Install openFrameworks for Windows 26

Hack 10 Install openFrameworks for OS X 27

Hack 11 Install openFrameworks for Ubuntu 28

Hack 12 Install the ofxKinect Add-on for openFrameworks 29

Hack 13 Use Processing 31

Hack 14 Install SimpleOpenNI and OpenKinect Processing Libraries 33

Hack 15 Install Cinder-Kinect for Mac OS X 33

3 Visual Effects 37

Hack 16 Use Quartz Composer with Synapse for Kinect 37

Hack 17 Draw in the Air with Processing 42

Hack 18 .Create a Gravitational Particle Effect 50

Hack 19 Make Objects Follow a Tracked User's Hand 54

Hack 20 Dynamically Change Colors and Background Perspective 59

Hack 21 Create a Live 3D Rendered Effect with Processing 62

Hack 22 Create a Hairy Effect 80

Hack 23 Create Hand Tracking Trails Using Cinder 84

4 Gestural Interfaces for Making Music 91

Hack 24 Install OSCeleton 91

Hack 25 Install Kinectar 94

Hack 26 Map Parameters in Ableton Live with Kinectar 98

Hack 27 Set Up a Drum Kit with Kinectar 100

Hack 28 Create a Dubstep Wobble Bassline with Kinectar 104

5 Motion Capture and Animation 111

Hack 29 Use Blender and Nl Mate for Motion Capture 112

Hack 30 Record Motion Capture with Blender and Nl Mate 115

Hack 31 Control a Rig in Blender with Nl Mate 117

Hack 32 Use Nl Mate with Animata 120

6 3D Object and Scene Reconstruction 125

Hack 33 Install RGBDemo and Skanect 125

Hack 34 Import RGBDemo Output into Blender 128

Hack 35 Use Skanect to Create a Scene Mesh 131

Hack 36 Use Processing to Create a 3D Scanner with Mesh Viewer 133

Hack 37 Import a Scanned Object for Printing with MakerBot 136

Hack 38 SetUpPCLandOpenCV 140

Hack 39 Display a Colored Point Cloud 142

Hack 40 Use Features to Track Camera Image Motion 145

Hack 41 Fuse Point Clouds into a Consistent 3D Model 151

Hack 42 Add Convenience Functionality to a 3D Model 167

Hack 43 Next Steps: SLAM, OctoMaps, Surface Reconstruction 174

7 Web Applications and Gaming 177

Hack 44 Install the Zigfu SDK 177

Hack 45 Create an HTML User Radar Using Zigfu SDK 178

Hack 46 Install Scratch and Kinect2Scratch 184

Hack 47 Create a Basic Tennis Game Using Scratch 186

Hack 48 Build a Defender-Style Shooter Game with Scratch 192

Hack 49 Build a Kinect Space Shooter Game in Processing 207

Hack 50 Build a Processing Fridge Magnet Game 218

8 Robotics and Natural User Interfaces 241

Hack 51 Control a Robotic Arm 241

Hack 52 Control a Robot's Navigation 248

Hack 53 Use Candescent N UI 248

Hack 54 Use Kinect Jesture for Mac 250

Hack 55 Use Linux Gesture-Based Mouse Control 252

Hack 56 Use Winect for Windows 254

Index 255