Book Image

Kinect for Windows SDK Programming Guide

By : Abhijit Jana
Book Image

Kinect for Windows SDK Programming Guide

By: Abhijit Jana

Overview of this book

Kinect has been a game-changer in the world of motion games and applications since its first release. It has been touted as a controller for Microsoft Xbox but is much more than that. The developer version of Kinect, Kinect for Windows SDK, provides developers with the tools to develop applications that run on Windows. You can use this to develop applications that make interaction with your computer hands-free. This book focuses on developing applications using the Kinect for Windows SDK. It is a complete end to end solution using different features of Kinect for Windows SDK with step by step guidance. The book will also help you develop motion sensitive and speech recognition enabled applications. You will also learn about building application using multiple Kinects.The book begins with explaining the different components of Kinect and then moves into to the setting up the device and getting thedevelopment environment ready. You will be surprised at how quickly the book takes you through the details of Kinect APIs. You will use NUI to use the Kinect for Natural Inputs like skeleton tracking, sensing, speech recognizing. You will capture different types of stream, and images, handle stream event, and capture frame. Kinect device contains a motorized tilt to control sensor angles, you will learn how to adjust it automatically. The last part of the book teaches you how to build application using multiple Kinects and discuss how Kinect can be used to integrate with other devices such as Windows Phone and microcontroller.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Kinect for Windows SDK Programming Guide
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgement
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Summary


This chapter gave you an inside look at the different components of the Kinect sensor. You saw that the major components of a Kinect device are its color sensor, IR depth sensors, IR emitter, microphone arrays, and a stepper motor that can be tilted to change the Kinect camera angles. While the color sensor and depth sensors ensure video and depth data input, which is of prime importance for the functioning of the device, the microphone arrays on the other hand ensure that the audio quality is also at par. Also worthwhile is mentioning about how kinect processes the depth data, and the array of microphones, which is a design novelty that helps in clear voice recognition with the use of the noise suppression and echo cancelation mechanisms. Kinect for Windows is also capable of tracking humans at a close range of approximately 40 centimeters using Near Mode. It wouldn't be wrong to say that it is this combination of technological innovations that make Kinect the awe-inspiring device that it is. You have also gone through the different possibilities of applications that can be developed using Kinect. In the next chapter, we will walk you through the step-by-step installation and configuration of the development environment setup along with different troubleshooting tips and tricks that will help you to be sure about everything before beginning with development.