KinEmote - Kinect Driven Media Control (OpenNI based open source project for Windows)

jaarjaar Wrote:Is there a maximum distance from which it will work? Also, is there a minimum light level for it to work? Will it work by the light of the TV in a dark room?

This is so interesting, I am planning on buying a Kinect just to use with my XBMC - but want to make sure it will work from about 8 feet away in a room when the lights are off (by the light of the TV itself)..

As it seems the best distance is around 3m.
The light level isn't that interesting since the Kinect projects an IR (infrared) grid which consists of millions of dots into the room. There are three "special" spots in the IR grid which shine a bit brighter and bolder than the rest and represent head, hand and foot. Check this video to see the Kinect in a dark room: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvvQJxgykcU
You only need light when you want to use the camera (e.g. video telephony).

Wow, that's cool. And just a little bit scary. Ya, I know, infrared is supposed to be harmless... but so was margarine.

It looks like PrimeSense and Asus are teaming up to release a non-"Kinect" version of the hardware aimed at HTPC use with a release date slated for February.

The press release mentions Open NI so here's hoping that it takes little to no work for you guys to get you solution working with Asus' solution. In case it hasn't been said lately the work you guys are doing is amazing.

Cheers!

All this about kinect working with XBMC sounds exciting. However I cannot figure it out how to connect my kinect to my PC via USB. I have the xbox 360 that comes with kinect in the same box and the orange USB male is not a regular USB. SHould I have a power adapter for the kinect sensor? Should I have a USB adapter ORANGE to USB 2.0? Please help

Yes, you need a power adapter for the kinect bundle. That´s also my Problem ;-)

Niclas7 Wrote:Hmm....don't think so since the CL NUI driver's don't exist anymore. I had completely removed them. When checking the devices in device manager I also cannot see any unwanted driver and device. Or do you think there are still remains left ? If yes, where can I find them to remove them ?
At least "dpinst-x86.exe" which is a part of the Sensor installation says that my drivers are fine and actual.

***UPDATE***

Oh well, after just having diconnected and reconnected the Kinect while having the device manager opened while showing hidden devices, Windows indead (re)installed a driver which was the XBOX NUI Audio driver !
So I uninstalled the driver via device manager and finally KinEmote can be started without any errors ! Although Windows still wants to reinstall the driver when disconnecting and reconnecting the Kinect. So now I have to get completely rid of the NUI thing.
But thanks for that hint pdeg69 !

Just wondering why I haven't seen this remaining driver before.... :\

Hi - I am having a similar/the same problem. I can't fix it with this method, though I might not be doing it correctly, would you mind seeing if you see where i'm going wrong? I am running windows 7.

1) I have installed OPENNI and the sensor driver
2) When I connect the Kinect, I get a pop up that the device has not been installed correctly
3) I test KinEmote, get the error Failed to open XML, cant create any node
4) Go to device manager, Kinect shows up as unknown device
5) I try to update with the drivers in C/programfiles/primesense, and windows determines the driver software is up to date.
6) Retest KinEmote, same error.
7) I go back to device manager, select show hidden devices
8) I disconnect and reconnect the Kinect, and retry step 5) and 6), no luck
9) I right click the unknown device and unistall the driver, and the device dissapears.
10) I disconnect and reconnect the device, and the whole process starts again.

This is where I get confused - you say you uninstall the wrong driver (what i think im doing at step 9) and KinEote starts to work - when I do this, the device just disappears and KinEmote continues to give me the same error (Though my error is slightly different from yours).

I also am not seeing anything that says xbox audio NUI.

Can you help? I really REALLY want to get kinect working with xbmc.

Cheers!

At first: did you install all three applpications in the correct order as being described in the ReadMe ?
If yes, uninstall the Sensor and reinstall it. If it still doesn't work uninstall everything and disconnect the Kinect. After that: reinstall the three apps in the appropriate order and connect the Kinect AFTER everything was installed correctly.

The "wrong" driver I had uninstalled to make it work was the NUI plattform which I had also installed and which doesn't work with the Open NI drivers.

Probably a reboot of Windows also helps to fix this issue after having installed the programs and drivers.

Please try it and let us know if you were successful.
Thanks.

Hi Niclas7, thanks for replying

I definately installed in the right order, but I have tried again by uninstalling everything, restarting, reinstalling everything in the correct order and restarting again before connecting the kinect. Unfortunately the same thing happens - windows tries to install a driver (even though I have set it to never install drivers from windows update), the kinect appears in device manager as Unknown Device, and KinEmote still does not work.

Just to clarify something you said in your posts - is the XBOX AUDIO NUI a driver you installed manually? The way you said it, it sounded like this was the driver that was inhibiting the kinect, and after you removed this your kinect was recognised. I was really hoping I was in the same situation : )

EDIT: Just to test, i also tried

Redownloading all the software and uninstalling, restarting, reinstalling, restarting
A couple of different USB ports

Stil to no avail : (

Many thanks for your help, and if you have any other thoughts I would still love to get this working!

EDIT 2:

Ok, so I did something different, and got a different fail:

This time, I installed the OpenNI framework, then the sensor drivers. After doing that I went to C:/program files(86)/primesense and ran the 64 bit installer from there
Then I installed the NITE Middleware.

I got the unrecognised device/device not installed properly alert as usual, but when I ran KinEmote I got a different error when I clicked connect. It had a long details log which I'll paste below

Curiouser and curiouser....

________________________________________________

See the end of this message for details on invoking
just-in-time (JIT) debugging instead of this dialog box.

************** Exception Text **************
System.IO.FileNotFoundException: The specified module could not be found. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8007007E)
at KinEmote.Main.butConnect_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.OnClick(EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Button.OnClick(EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Button.OnMouseUp(MouseEventArgs mevent)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmMouseUp(Message& m, MouseButtons button, Int32 clicks)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.ButtonBase.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Button.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.OnMessage(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)


************** Loaded Assemblies **************
mscorlib
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.4952 (win7RTMGDR.050727-4900)
CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/Microsoft.NET/Framework/v2.0.50727/mscorlib.dll
----------------------------------------
KinEmote
Assembly Version: 0.3.0.0
Win32 Version: 0.3.0.0
CodeBase: file:///C:/Program%20Files%20(x86)/KinEmote/KinEmote%20v0.3/KinEmote.exe
----------------------------------------
System.Windows.Forms
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.4927 (NetFXspW7.050727-4900)
CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Windows.Forms/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Windows.Forms.dll
----------------------------------------
System
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.4927 (NetFXspW7.050727-4900)
CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Drawing
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.4927 (NetFXspW7.050727-4900)
CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Drawing/2.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/System.Drawing.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Configuration
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.4927 (NetFXspW7.050727-4900)
CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Configuration/2.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/System.Configuration.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Xml
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.4927 (NetFXspW7.050727-4900)
CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Xml/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Xml.dll
----------------------------------------
Accessibility
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.4927 (NetFXspW7.050727-4900)
CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/assembly/GAC_MSIL/Accessibility/2.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/Accessibility.dll
----------------------------------------

************** JIT Debugging **************
To enable just-in-time (JIT) debugging, the .config file for this
application or computer (machine.config) must have the
jitDebugging value set in the system.windows.forms section.
The application must also be compiled with debugging
enabled.

For example:

<configuration>
<system.windows.forms jitDebugging="true" />
</configuration>

When JIT debugging is enabled, any unhandled exception
will be sent to the JIT debugger registered on the computer
rather than be handled by this dialog box.

hmmm, I am desperate to get this working!!

everything seems to be installed correctly, KinEmote connects to XBMC, get a popup within XBMC saying it is connected.

But the 'show visual feed' option in KinEmote only shows a static image, should I be seeing moving image here?

Also, are the samples that come with NITE something I can play with, because they don't work either.

Have done lots of uninstall/reinstalls and restarts, read this whole thread, I feel I have to have missed something . Using Windows 7.

any help appreciated.

@inahat: Yes, you should see a moving image. To be precise: you should see two moving images. One camera image and a colored one.

@iswasdoes: WHOA ! This is what I call an error message !
Well, really good question what has happened.
To answer your question concerning the NUI audi device driver: it seems like the Kinect's audio device is always recognized by the device manager as XBOX NUI audio device. Removing this entry from the device manager by uninstalling it leads to reappearance when reconnecting the Kinect. So I guess it can be disregarded. Or you do as pdeg69 has written in his post:

Quote:@Niclas7, I had exactly the same problems. I'm not used to try installing a driver 6 times :-) After the Primesensor camera and motor installed correctly I installed the NUI-audio (ONLY the NUI-audio) driver also to get rid of the driver message. KinEmote still working after that. However there is no use for the audiodriver yet so this is pretty useless atm.

Do you have another system (PC or notebook) on which you can run a clean installation of the needed apps and the Kinect to exclude any remains which affect any tries of new installations.