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

Understanding the Kinect image stream


An image stream is nothing but a succession of still image frames. Kinect can deliver the still image frame within a range of 12 to 30 frames per second (fps). The frame rate can change as per the requested type and resolution. The SDK supports two types of image stream formats:

  • Color image stream

  • Depth image stream

Different streams are transferred in different pipelines, which you must enable along with the type of data that you want from the sensor. The type of image frames depend on input parameters such as the frame resolution, image type, and frame rate. Based on your inputs, the sensor will initialize the stream channel for data transfer. If you are not specifying anything, the SDK will pick up the default image type and resolution defined in the SDK for that particular channel.

Note

The image frames are stored into a buffer before they are used by the application. If there is any delay in reading the buffer data and rendering it as images, the buffer...