Comments on: Free Kinect drivers released; Adafruit pays $3k bounty to hacker, $2k more to EFF

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’m more interested in seeing what people create with this thing then what games are going to use it. Some people have found really interesting ways to use wii hardware.

By: robulus

robulus — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

That dude rocks. I love the way he just mumbles off in a tangent.

By: drog

drog — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Is this just a feed from the cameras?

I thought the real cool part of Kinnect was the code for motion capture, voice/face recognition, etc.

Without access to that stuff, what can the open source community do with this that they cannot do with a cheap webcam?

By: cromulent1

cromulent1 — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

The depth perception is the major gain, I’d say. I think it’s pretty sensitive. More sensitive than the color gradients in the compressed YouTube video make it seem, at least.

There’s definitely some amount of processing going on on the console side of things, but it’s processing being done using the depth, video, and likely audio input streams from the Kinect.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

The big thing, as far as I can tell, is the depth sensing abilities (highlighted on the left in the video). The depth sensing image would show people and objects as distinct from their background and should be MUCH easier to code into motion capture / face recognizers.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Let the lawsuits begin!

By: drog

drog — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Hmmm… I’ll bet with depth tracking and head tracking you could make any display a 3D screen (at least for one person) using methods similar to johnny lees wiimote stuff

By: Kimmo

Kimmo — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I heartily approve of this news : D

By: classic01

classic01 — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

What took you so long! ;-)

Writing a driver is very labor intensive. But it is to show that there is NOTHING unbreakable or intricate enough for the huge collective and collaborative development process we have with the internet today.

By: MacD

MacD — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

You know what this means?

Cheap 3D scanning.

With the depth information you can move around an object and scan it. Slower movement and multiple passes increase fidelity. Using Fourier analysis techniques (the same used in MRI’s) you combine the data to form a 3d image.

This is much cheaper than a single laser scanner (albeit MUCH less precise) and faster (probably less computationally intensive) and probably more accurate than doing the 3d analysis using a ‘mere’ (web)camera (as can be done now).

I’m curious to what resolutions can be resolved … and if using the accelerometer data would mean we could scan freehand …

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Watch out on the upcoming maker fair. With this gadget you can cut yourself on cnc router

By: andygates

andygates — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

So, who’s going to be first to hook up a Kinect to a RepRap and make a disruptive 3D copier?

By: WMC

WMC — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

MS: GRAR FEAR OUR AWESOME HARDWARE CIRCUMVENTION PROTECTIONZ MWAHHAAAHA

Some guy: Ya hi so I bought this Kinect thingy before lunch and then I made a sammidj and anyway here’s a driver

MS: …what kind of sammidj?