Microsoft Kinect is an exclusive controller-free motion sensor add-on peripheral for Xbox 360 that allows users to play the games using own body, literally, without any controller. Though Kinect is currently designed for Xbox 360, Microsoft has plan to link Kinect for use on next version of Windows operating system, rumored to be Windows 8, but hackers who can’t wait have managed to hack the Kinect and developed open source device driver with SDK or API for Kinect.
The device driver for Kinect, a low-level hardware-dependent and operating-system-specific software that acts as a translator between a hardware device and the applications or operating systems that use it, allows Kinect to be installed as a device and interact with higher level computer programs. As such, Kinect can be used on PCs and other devices to take advantage of the color and depth (RGB-D) sensing camera, accelerometer and microphones on Kinect, or control the rotating and tilting motor. The benefits are wide, as Kinect can potentially applies to areas such as robotics, virtual multi-touch, HCI, educational, surveillance, motion capture, people or object tracing, 3D video capturing or scanning and etc.
The device driver for Kinect, a low-level hardware-dependent and operating-system-specific software that acts as a translator between a hardware device and the applications or operating systems that use it, allows Kinect to be installed as a device and interact with higher level computer programs. As such, Kinect can be used on PCs and other devices to take advantage of the color and depth (RGB-D) sensing camera, accelerometer and microphones on Kinect, or control the rotating and tilting motor. The benefits are wide, as Kinect can potentially applies to areas such as robotics, virtual multi-touch, HCI, educational, surveillance, motion capture, people or object tracing, 3D video capturing or scanning and etc.
Mar 24, 2020 Kinect for Mac Free Download: Kinect for Mac is a peripheral device sensor application that functions much like a webcam on the Mac desktop PC. The Kinect Mac app is a motion-sensing input device in which the users have to play games using their body as the game controller.Its working is based on a webcam-style add-on peripheral that lets the users control and interact with their console. Mar 08, 2018 i know this post is old but i'm struggling already getting my kinect v1 to work on mac with unity. I finally downloaded zigfu files (domain was dead) using the wayback machine. Step-by-step walkthroughs are available for Windows 7, Mac OS X, and Ubuntu that cover installing the libfreenect drivers, OpenNI, NITE, and SensorKinect, along with the Kinect SDK. For the sake of consistency, the guides formulated in this section have been successfully tested on a Mac running OS X 10.7, Windows 7, and Ubuntu 11.10. Nov 15, 2010 Hacked Microsoft Kinect Works with Mac OS X. By Jamie Lendino on November 15, 2010 at 12:37 pm. A set of open-source drivers surfaced letting people hack it. Jan 10, 2018 Minimum Mac OS X 10.9; Windows 8 64 bit support; Kinect v2; Kinect v2 additional software. For Windows 8, Follow the the installation of the libusk driver. First install the Kinect v2 Windows SDK then change the USB 3.0 drivers properties to libusbK using Zadig. No longer need to external install Turbo Jpeg for Mac.
The open source Kinect device driver is now been published as OpenKinect or libfreenect, first developed by Hector Martin. Actually, the first video demo of Kinect working on Windows 7 was published by NUI Group (AlexP), which has also published separate Windows Kinect driver as CL NUI Platform.
OpenKinect drivers include all code necessary to activate, initialize, and communicate data with the Kinect hardware. OpenKinect is cross-platform and run on Windows, Linux, and OS X. The drivers will expose an API for C/C++ and managed code (C#).
Download OpenKinect drivers pre-compiled binary for Linux, Windows (both x86 32-bit and x64 64-bit version)and Mac OS X platform from openkinect.org and source code from github.com.
OpenKinect (libfreenect) unofficial port with pre-compiled binaries for Mac OS X and Windows is also available from here.
CL NUI Platform consists of an SDK, API and a stable driver for Microsoft Kinect hardware (Xbox NUI Audio, NUI Camera, NUI Motor and Accelerometer) devices on Windows machines. It also comes with a sample WPF application – CL NUI Device Test, which allows users to control the cameras, move up or down the motor or accelerometer and change the color of LED.
Download CL NUI Platform installer from codelaboratories.com and the overview.
Kinect open source driver demo
Video demonstrating Kinect NUI Motor device controlled from Window 7 with real time accelerometer data displayed.
Kinect Color and Depth Cameras on Windows 7
Color and 3D Depth Sensing with Kinect
Smackall Games, an Indian Game Design Studio for mobile devises just released their 3D scanning software to use the Microsoft Kinect scanner to capture 3D models.
The screenshot shows the OS X interface including Meshlab which can be used to clean up and stitch together multiple scans including patching holes. I used it alot with other laser scanner and digitizers I used. It is also free. While the resolution of the Kinect is rather coarse, those 3D scans can be used as a 3D sketch object to draw your cleaner topology over in Blender. Because this software is also only $1.99 it might worth to try out incase you have a Kinect already. The upcoming version has some very promising features lined up. If you google for MS Kinect you can find it already for as low as 110 US $. If you feel not comfortable with sculpting maybe this combo could be a good fit to shorten the time needed to develop well proportioned characters.
Features in version 1.0:
Kinect Drivers For Mac Os X
- Captures with/without background. Uses a good self learning background removal algorithm that detects moving objects and removes noises.
- The captured mesh can be exported to PLY file format.
- The mesh is filled with vertex coloring.
Proposed Features in version 2.0:
- Additional file formats (3ds, obj, dae, fbx, ...).
- Capturing Animation in deforming Mesh.
- Facial Expression capturing.
Kinect Drivers For Mac Os X 10 12
- 3D Scanner (Mac)
- Meshlab (Mac/Win/Linux)