Kinect Fundamentals #1: Installation & Setup

Welcome to the first part of my Kinect Findamentals series. In this series, we will look at how you can implement your own Kinect-applications using XNA 4.0.

Update: This tutorial has been updated to using the February 2012 version of the SDK. Enjoy

What is the Kinect?

The Kinect is a motion sensing device for XBOX 360, and now also for Windows. It is a natural user interface for interacting with the XBOX 360 and Windows PC by using gestures and body movement, instead of a controller.

The Kinect Sensor
The Kinect Sensor device consists of an RGB camera taking 30 images pr. second (not a video stream) @ 640×480, and 15 images pr. second @ 1280×1024, depth cameras (infrared) and a multi-array mic.

Connecting the Kinect

Step 0
If you don’t have a Kinect for Windows Sensor, you can (probably) find it at your nearest electronics dealer or buy it online.

Step 1
Download and install the Kinect for Windows SDK:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/kinectforwindows/develop/overview.aspx

Step 2
Connect the Kinect device using the adapter for USB (if the plug is orange, don’t plug it, you will need the adapter) and Automatic Update will install the drivers.

Now, restart the computer.

If correctly installed, you can see the device in Device Manager (Control panel->System).

Once the Kinect is connected, you can find the microphone as any other microphone connected to your PC.

Testing the Kinect
There should be an application that you can use to view the skeletal. The application was installed with the Kinect SDK.

Now start the Kinect Sample Browser, select C# and run some of the examples to make sure it’s correctly installed.

If the application give you some kind of error, please check this article by the kinect-team on what might be wrong.
http://support.xbox.com/en-US/kinect-for-windows/kinect-for-windows-info