Getting Started

This page documents how to get started using OpenKinect.

The libraries are very much in flux and this won't be the final process. This also means these instructions might be out of date with the latest commits.

Linux

Already compiled rpm and deb packages are available here: http://livingplace.informatik.haw-hamburg.de/blog/?p=228

Please note, that there are not udev generated devices for now, so you need to execute your programs as root (use sudo)

Ubuntu

An Ubuntu launchpad ppa for Lucid(10.04) and Maverick (10.10) is available at:

https://launchpad.net/~arne-alamut/+archive/freenect

to use it, open a console and execute:

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:arne-alamut/freenect

Resynchronize the list of packages from the repository:

$ sudo apt-get update

After that, you can use:

$ sudo apt-get install libfreenect

After that, you need to addyourself to the 'video' group and log back in.

$ sudo adduser YOURNAME video

To start the OpenGL demo application:

$ glview

Manual build under linux

these instruction need more work, mostly taken from README.asciidoc

clone the repo

$ git clone https://github.com/OpenKinect/libfreenect.git
$ cd libfreenect

cmake

$ mkdir c/build
$ cd c/build
$ cmake ..
$ make

test

maybe you need to do this as root

$ examples/glview

OS X

Prerequisites:

• git
• cmake

Best to install via a package manager. If you're not already using [macports](http://www.macports.org/) or [fink](http://www.finkproject.org/), try [homebrew](https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew). Note: please update homebrew to the latest version, before trying to fetch cmake, as there has been a lot of bugfixing lately.

Next create fetch the OpenKinect repository and libusb:

git clone https://github.com/OpenKinect/libfreenect.git
git clone git://git.libusb.org/libusb.git

You will need to patch libusb for OpenKinect like so:

cd libusb
./autogen.sh
patch -p1 < ../libfreenect/platform/osx/libusb-osx-kinect.diff
./configure
make
sudo make install

and configure OpenKinect:

cd ../libfreenect/
cd c
mkdir build
cd build
ccmake ..

Now press 'c' in ccmake to configure it. It will likely fail, because it cannot find libusb. Press 'e' to exit help and manually edit the path to libusb in the following screen to point to

/usr/local/include/libusb-1.0/

and continue

When you're done, build OpenKinect:

cmake ..
make

If you want to build OpenKinect as an Xcode project, do

cmake -G Xcode ..

And you're done! There now should be a program called 'glview' in libfreenect/c/build/examples. Connect your Kinect and start it!

(originally from http://www.spoofscript.com/blog/?p=327)

Windows

Getting Started in Windows Getting_Started_Windows

Dependencies

http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/libusb-win32/wiki

ftp://sourceware.org/pub/pthreads-win32/dll-latest

http://www.xmission.com/~nate/glut.html