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

KinEmote - Kinect Driven Media Control

KinEmote is an easy-to-use application that allows Windows users to navigate the menus of Boxee and XBMC media portals using nothing but hand gestures that are captured by MicroSoft's Kinect camera. It's built around the OpenNI framework and NITE Middleware provided by PrimeSense Inc.

KinEmote Public Beta is available for Windows 32 and 64 bit systems and can be downloaded for free at http://code.google.com/p/kinemote/

Please note if you're upgrading from Kinect Remote for XBMC alpha you'll have to install the new version of the OpenNI framework

Source:
Will be released after some much needed cleaning.

Latest public beta in action
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y0JT0xR_a4

Old Videos:
First demo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKyFL3CgIXc
Second demo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1h5OP-FKhOo
Third demo showing v0.02 ALPHA in action http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AV3jffH7jPg

Damn that looks sleek mate, great work

Can i buy an kenetic kit and get this working on my asrock 330ht ?

Thums upp for your great effort. I'm hoping to see an linux version in the future
Cheers

Awesome! That's exactly what I was thinking of when I first read that the official drivers have been released

I don't have a Kinect yet but I will follow this project for sure and maybe going to get myself one later on.

Thumbs upp!

Yes i will eventually rewrite it to something usable under linux as well, but for now i use C# since i have most experience with that. That way i can rapidly prototype different techniques for controlling xbmc. The swipe gestures look neat, but are absolutely unusable in a library with more than 10 movies. I'm currently looking into a virtual slider solution that enables you to scroll at different speeds, but maybe a push and swipe technique would work even better. Also, context sensitivity has to be integrated, when playing a movie you want different actions than in your movie library.

Ideas on navigation techniques are very welcome, as very people have created something like this before. Xbox kinect dash & the opensense media center demo are my only references right now.

alex84 Wrote:Can i buy an kenetic kit and get this working on my asrock 330ht ?

I'd have to test the performance, but as long as it runs windows it _should_ work.

Impressive man, can't wait to have it released

Johnsel Wrote:Ideas on navigation techniques are very welcome, as very people have created something like this before.

I don't know how possible it is, but the obvious one would be trying to emulate the touch-swipe motion of smartphones. You'd probably need position, velocity and acceleration (with the latter two being derivatives of position of course). I think this would involve the entire hand and maybe some use of the forearm/arm.


Practically, I think it would get tiring waving your arm around that much though. Assuming the user is close enough to the Kinect so that it can distinguish individual fingers, an entirely different route could be this for basic navigation (which I think I like more):

1. Have the nominal state of scrolling (e.g. no movement) occur when the user has a clenched fist (thumb pointing upwards). I think this makes sense because it's relaxed and natural
2. Point the index finger out to the Kinect and have this be one keystroke of 'down arrow'
3. Hold this for, say, .5 seconds to start inducing an accelerated scroll (easily done in EventGhost, not sure about XBMC, but probably that as well)
4. Curl the finger back in to stop the scroll. Repeat as needed.
5. Point your thumb upwards for one keystroke of 'up arrow'
6. Hold this for, say, .5 seconds to start inducing an accelerated scroll
7. Curl the thumb back down to stop the scroll. Repeat as needed.

This method can be combined with whole hand movements or fist movements for a wider range of inputs, but I think it's good in general to stick to the least effort possible for the most common inputs.

Seperate finger tracking is another interesting technique, will look into that too. Only problem with the vanilla kinect driver is the low resolution (640x480), which obviously complicates tracking very slight changes in hand position. I did see an example that increases the resolution to 1280x1024 at the cost of framerate, which goes down to 10fps iirc. Don't know whether that would be enough.

Anyways, thanks for providing input.

That is so Geeky that I love it. Good job man.

Microsoft seems to be embracing the fact that they can actually make money off their stuff when they let others hack on it.

very nice, would it be able to have a look at the code you have created - pls?

this is awesome. linux would be great also.

Good luck!