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Welcome to the OpenKinect project

About

OpenKinect is an open community of people interested in making use of the amazing Xbox Kinect hardware with our PCs and other devices. We are working on free, open source libraries that will enable the Kinect to be used with Windows, Linux, and Mac.

The OpenKinect community consists of over 2000 members contributing their time and code to the Project. Our members have joined this Project with the mission of creating the best possible suite of applications for the Kinect. OpenKinect is a true "open source" community!

Our primary focus is currently the libfreenect software. Code contributed to OpenKinect where possible is made available under an Apache20 or optional GPL2 license.

• Source code is available here: https://github.com/OpenKinect/libfreenect

• Get started right away by installing the software to your platform.

Communications

If you want to participate or just watch the progress of the OpenKinect effort, subscribe to the OpenKinect mailing list. In the application form, please tell us something about yourself and you'll be approved automatically. You could also subscribe to the low-traffic announcement-only mailing list.

• You can follow us on Twitter @openkinect. Please use the #tag #openkinect when tweeting your work.

• You can meet people in your area working on OpenKinect through Meetup Groups:
  • NYC
  • QC-Colab Davenport, IA
  • San Francisco

• You can also chat with people developing on OpenKinect software on IRC: #OpenKinect on irc.freenode.net or using this web based chat.
• Channel logs (daily rotation) can be found here.

Project information

• Project Roadmap - The current roadmap for the project (libfreenect, analysis library, and applications)
• People - Who is doing what: project leader, maintainers, contributors etc.
• Project History - A few key dates and milestones
• Project Policies - The official name of the project, license, contribution policy, developers coordination and decision making
• Installation - How to download, build and install on Linux, OS X and Windows
• Contributing Code - Official repositories, use of a fork and source header, signing off, submissions and evaluation etc.
• Code Integration - How to deal with how we use git: repository policy, git usage, workflow, starting development, integration process etc.
• Contributing - There are many ways to contribute: testing, administrative tasks, support related, documentation, collaboration etc.
• FAQ - Frequently asked questions
• Project Ideas - Ideas and concepts to explore using OpenKinect
• Gallery - Videos and links to things people are doing with OpenKinect
• Project Logo - Logo specifications

API Documentation

• High Level - High-level API documentation

Wrappers

• Python
• C Synchronous - Provides functions to get data instead of callbacks
• Actionscript
• C++
• C#
• Java JNI
• Java JNA
• Javascript
• Common Lisp - Getting started with libfreenect on Common Lisp

Utilities

• Record - Dumps Kinect data to PPM, PGM, and a bin dump for RGB, Depth, and Accel respectively.
• Fakenect - libfreenect simulator/mock interface that lets you use the kinect demos without having a kinect (plays back data from Record)

Knowledge base

• Reference design - US Patent Application "Depth mapping using projected patterns"
• NUI Camera DSP - Camera DSP, architecture, instruction set, firmware, and capabilities
• lsusb output - Device identifier output
• USB Devices - Overview of the hardware devices
• Protocol Documentation - General information about the Kinect USB procotol
• USB Protocol Information - Other information about the Kinect USB protocol
• Init Analysis - Messing with various init sequences
• Imaging Information - Information about the imaging data returned by the Kinect
• Research Material - Research material for software layer implementation
• Hardware_info - Hardware information
• Calibration - Gathering information for including calibration facilities

Links

OpenNI

• http://openni.org - Open Natural Interaction, an industry-led, not-for-profit organization formed to certify and promote the compatibility and interoperability of Natural Interaction (NI) devices, applications and middleware.
• http://github.com/openni - Open source framework for natural interaction devices
• http://github.com/PrimeSense/Sensor - Open source driver for the PrimeSensor Development Kit

Comment Threads

• http://ladyada.net/learn/diykinect/ - How the Kinect was hacked very detailed overview of what was involved
• http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2010/11/04/the-open-kinect-project-the-ok-prize-get-1000-bounty-for-kinect-for-xbox-360-open-source-drivers/ - Adafruit's competition. Comment thread contains list of some of the people working on this.
• http://hackaday.com/2010/11/04/kilobuck-open-kinect-project-prize/ - Hackaday's coverage of the bounty. Again, interesting comment thread.

Tech

• http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Microsoft-Kinect-Teardown/4066/ - Hardware teardown. Chip info is here. (via adafruit)
• http://kinecthacks.net/kinect-pinout/ - Pinout info of the Kinect Sensor
• http://www.primesense.com/?p=535 - Primesense reference implementation (via adafruit thread)
• http://www.sensorland.com/HowPage090.html - How sensors work and the bayer filter
• http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/ - Model for branching within Git
• http://www.numenta.com/htm-overview/education/HTM_CorticalLearningAlgorithms.pdf - Suggestions to implement pseudocode near the end
• http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/floss-license-slide.html Which licenses are compatible with which
• http://www.eetimes.com/design/signal-processing-dsp/4211071/Inside-Xbox-360-s-Kinect-controller - Another Hardware Teardown. Note this article incorrectly states that the PS1080 talks to the Marvell chip.

Kinect Themed sites

• http://www.reddit.com/r/openkinect/ OpenKinect news and discussion community
• http://www.kinectHacks.net - Kinect hacking blog and forum
• http://www.freenect.com/ - Kinect hacking news
• http://www.modmykinect.com - The innovation begins.
• http://www.Bodensee-Deal.de/ - Kinect hacking news in German
• http://www.kinectxbox360.es/ - Novedades, hacks y juegos de kinect en español.
• http://www.kinectHacks.nl - Dutch Kinect hacking blog and forum

Random

• Linux contribution procedure http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=blob;f=Documentation/SubmittingPatches
• Git project contribution procedure http://git.kernel.org/?p=git/git.git;a=blob_plain;f=Documentation/SubmittingPatches;hb=HEAD