Adafruit Industries lit a fire under the hacking community's feet when it announced a chance to win $2,000 to the first person to deliver open-source software drivers for the Kinect, and it looks like a winner has emerged.
Nothing has yet been verified, but NUI Group forum member "AlexP" posted a couple of videos showing the Kinect merrily communicating with Windows. Microsoft, as you might imagine, probably isn't going to take the news well and was never in support of the contest to begin with.
"Microsoft does not condone the modification of its products," a company spokesperson told CNet. "With Kinect, Microsoft built in numerous hardware and software safeguards designed to reduce the chances of product tampering. Microsoft will continue to make advances in these types of safeguards and work closely with law enforcement and product safety groups to keep Kinect tamper-resistant."
AlexP has been down this road before. In addition to hacking the Kinect, he also modified Sony's PS3Eye Camera to run under Windows.
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TheQuietShadow
November 08, 2010 at 3:05pm
Think robotics, with the ability to use it's 3d sensor, microphones, panning and tilting. This thing would be awsome when used with robotics, facial recognition, autonomous vehicles. the posibilities are endless.
Mighty BOB!
November 08, 2010 at 2:56pm
Can you play Crysis with it?
(Really. How are you supposed to control a shooter with this thing? At least with a Wiimote or a Move controller you have buttons in your hands.)
JohnP
November 08, 2010 at 11:35am
I donno why folks think this will be that useful. Kinect is made to read full body movement from 6-8 feet away. I am sitting, what, 1.5 foot from my monitor? So where do I put the kinect? Behind me? on the ceiling? If it is just for voice, Drangon anturally speaking does fine controlling the PC. I also have a high res Logitech webcam that someone could certainly write hand waving recognition for.
I just cannot see the need.
tkid124
November 08, 2010 at 9:34am
See years ago, I decided I liked the idea of using a controller on my pc, so I looked at the gaming controller, and the winner in my mind was the X-Box 360, so I compared the wired to the wireless and wireless won big time. So I own this thing called an adapter, it connects my X-Box remote and my pc together. Why not allow this to do the same thing and even supported.
I know why Microsoft doesn't want this to be hacked, they want to have control over their products so that a bad driver of sorts doesn't ruin their product reputation. That is fair, but are they becoming a little too much like Apple, in their control of things, or are we hearing the same comment over and over again thinking that Microsoft has a witch hunt started when they just simply had a press release?
someuid
November 08, 2010 at 10:16am
...they are doing this because they want you to, after buying WindowsNewFlavor, and OfficeMinorUpgrade, shell out more of your dwindling paycheck for an XBox, even if you don't want one.
Bgilbert47
November 08, 2010 at 8:36am
The marketing guys at Microsoft weren't obviously included in this decision.
The smart thing for them to do would be to offer a Win7/Win8 compatible version of the Kinect, thus ensuring a ready made audience who would purchase Win8 when it came out to unlock the more advance featuers of the PC Kinect system. (The same way they tried to lure people to buy Vista by baiting them with Halo 3.)
Ghok
November 08, 2010 at 8:17am
"Microsoft does not condone the modification of its products,"
So that's a market you're ignoring. Smart guys. People are waking up and starting to realize that we should be able to do what we want with the products we buy.
I'll never likely own an Xbox, and so this would be nice if I could use this product.
TheQuietShadow
November 08, 2010 at 3:11pm
You are right, but it's also not illegal to put in a chip to make the Kinect fry itself if you try to use a driver that was made by anyone other than Microsoft.
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