Lot's of trouble with programming with the kinect in Windows 8. please help!

dragonvlame

I have a problem. I am studying Arts and education and I want to make an interactive installation. I bought a kinect in order to do this and I installed processing. I've watched several tutorials and now I am trying to write my own code, based on existing codes, but most of them won't work!!

This is my idea (see the picture for reference):

I want to make a projection of the person in front of the screen. The silhouette is made up from text, sentences about bullying and suicide. The background is black, the text is white.

Also I want to add sound, that increases in volume when the person comes closer. This is something additional, it is not top priority.

Which libraries do I have to use? I have SimpleOpenNI 1.96. How do I start the code or have to write it? I've tried several things but they all won't work. How can I make a projection of a silhouette? How can I replace it with text? etc.

Specifications:

Windows 8 Processing 2.1 64-bit SimpleOpenNI 1.96 Windows Kinect driver SDK 1.7

Please help me understand this!

koogs

(two other copies of this question deleted. please don't post duplicates.)

velvetkevorkian

Have you tried the SimpleOpenNI examples? That's the best place to start. Greg Borenstein's book Making Things See goes into a bit more detail — I borrowed a copy from my university library.

If that doesn't work, you need to try and narrow your question so we can help you. Try and work out some individual elements, break the problem down into smaller chunks and start there. If you have a problem, try and reduce it to the smallest amount of code possible and the forum can try and help you out.

What you're proposing isn't impossible by any means — Processing and SimpleOpenNi alone should be able to accomplish what you're looking for, and look at Minim for sound.

dragonvlame

Thanks for your reaction velvetkevorkian. For starters, I've tried the tutorial from Ammon_Owed on creative application's to try out a basic code for a silhouette. The code doesn't work. First I get the problem 'the function enableScene() does not exist'. I've read that the Scene function changed to user. So my new code would be:

// Kinect Basic Example by Amnon Owed (15/09/12)

// import library
import SimpleOpenNI.*;
// declare SimpleOpenNI object
SimpleOpenNI context;

// PImage to hold incoming imagery
PImage cam;

void setup() {
  // same as Kinect dimensions
  size(640, 480);
  // initialize SimpleOpenNI object
  context = new SimpleOpenNI(this);
  if (!context.enableUser()) {
    // if context.enableScene() returns false
    // then the Kinect is not working correctly
    // make sure the green light is blinking
    println("Kinect not connected!");
    exit();
  } else {
    // mirror the image to be more intuitive
    context.setMirror(true);
  }
}

void draw() {
  // update the SimpleOpenNI object
  context.update();
  // put the image into a PImage
  cam = context.userImage().get();
  // display the image
  image(cam, 0, 0);
}

---

When I try to run this code, the screen pops up and closes again, with the error: Kinect not connected! The Kinect does work, when I run examples from the SimpleOpenNI Library, there's nothing wrong. I've tried several things and in other codes I could delete the 'if...' function. And when I do this in the code from Ammon_owed I get:

It's so frustrating that none of the basic codes I found works! So my first question would be: How can I write a basic code for making silhouettes with the kinect?

For your information, I've tried the tutorial from Daniel Shiffman also, and then I get the error that the function 'kinect.start' is not working properly because the library isn't installed properly. I've re-installed this library many times and every time it won't work.

:(

dragonvlame

oke, that code did weird when I posted it.. Sorry, I will post a picture:

dragonvlame