Ben O’Steen
Doing work today on using Kinnect as controller for an AR Drone
Kinnect not just camera, but also uses IR Projection – this allows it to calculate things like distance – darker stuff is further away

Open Sound Control library (OSC) – allows you to stream bytes from one place, and pick them up at another
Ben using OSC to broadcast tracking info from the Kinnect – just the data points – example tracking hands and shoulders

Has used this to make flapping motions map to up and down motion of AR Drone 🙂

But idea is that based on the byte stream from OSC – means you can easily consume data without having to have Kinnect etc. – so provides lightweight way of getting data out and using. E.g. someone today has built a spotify control based on byte stream

Ben demoing ‘raw capture’ from Kinnect – pointing out issues with very thin items (e.g. chair legs) and reflective items

Ben says – if you want to hack Kinnect, don’t buy one that comes bundled with XBox because doesn’t have separate power supply if you buy bundled version

OpenNI is the place to start with Kinnect hacking – but still not straightforward at the moment – be prepared to spend quite a bit of time on this!