Kinect SDK

Kinect SDK for Windows v 1.8 Released

September 20, 2013 .NET, .NET Framework, Kinect Development, Kinect SDK, KnowledgeBase, Microsoft, Microsoft SDKs, Visual Studio 2013, VisualStudio, VS2010, VS2012, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Embedded 7, Windows Store No comments

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Microsoft has released latest version of Kinect SDK for Windows and Kinect Developer Toolkit for Windows. The Kinect for Windows Software Development Kit (SDK) enables developers to create applications that support gesture and voice recognition, using Kinect sensor technology on computers running Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, and Windows Embedded Standard 7.

News features available in this SDK are:

  • Color Capture and Camera Pose Finder for Kinect Fusion
  • Webserver for Kinect Data Streams
  • Kinect Background Removal
  • Windows 8.1 Support
  • New Samples!
  • HTML interaction sample
  • Multiple-sensor Kinect Fusion sample.
  • Adaptive UI sample
  • Realistic color capture with Kinect Fusion.
  • Improved tracking robustness with Kinect Fusion.

    The Kinect for Windows SDK, driver, and runtime v1.8 are 100% compatible with Kinect for Windows v1.0, 1.5, 1.6, and 1.7 applications.

    The Kinect for Windows SDK includes the following:
  • Drivers for using Kinect for Windows sensors on a computer running Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, and Windows Embedded Standard 7
  • Application programming interfaces (APIs) and device interfaces
  • Note: Samples, tools, and other valuable development resources are available in the Kinect for Windows Developer Toolkit.
    To learn more about the SDK visit:

DOWNLOAD:

Kinect for Windows SDK v1.8

Kinect for Windows Developer Toolkit v1.8

Kinect for Windows Runtime 1.8

Kinect for Windows Human Interface Guidelines

Kinect for Windows SDK v1.7 released

March 19, 2013 .NET, .NET Framework, .NET Framework 4.5, Community, Kinect Development, Kinect SDK, KnowledgeBase, Microsoft, Microsoft SDKs, MSDN, VisualStudio, VS2010, VS2012, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8 No comments

Microsoft has released the latest version of Kinect for Windows SDK – v1.7 with cool features for developers.

The key features introduced are:

  • Kinect Interactions –  Kinect Interactions are designed to let users intuitively do things like press their hand forward a few inches to push a button, or close their hands to “grip and pan” as seen here. Now you can untether yourself and move around a conference room naturally.
  • Kinect Fusion –  a tool included in Kinect for Windows SDK 1.7, can create highly accurate
    3-D renderings of people and objects in real time.

For more details read the Kinect for Windows team announcement blog and view release notes

Download Kinect for Windows SDK v 1.7   | Updated March 18, 2013, 228 MB

Download Kinect for Windows Developer Toolkit | Updated March 18, 2013, 378 MB

Download Kinect for Windows Runtime v1.7   ( the runtime is required to run Kinect for Windows applications on a production environment. )

Courtesy Microsoft Download Center

Kinect for Windows SDK v1.6–Released

October 9, 2012 .NET, All, C#.NET, Featured, HotFixes, Kinect Development, Kinect SDK, KnowledgeBase, Microsoft, Microsoft SDKs, ToolKits, Updates, VisualStudio, VS2010, VS2012, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Phone, Windows Phone Development, Windows Phone SDK, WPF 3 comments

Microsoft has released v1.6 of the Kinect for Windows SDK with support for Windows 8 application support, Visual Studio 2012 development support. You can develop Windows Store applications that would utilize the Kinect Sensor through the USB interface, the new SDK provides enough support necessary for application development using Visual Studio 2012 in a Windows 8 environment.

Continue Reading….

The Kinect for Windows Software Development Kit (SDK) enables developers to create applications that support gesture and voice recognition, using Kinect sensor technology on computers running Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows Embedded Standard 7.

What’s new?

The Kinect for Windows SDK, driver, and runtime v1.6 are 100% compatible with Kinect for Windows v1.0 and 1.5 applications and include new features such as: access to additional features of the Kinect Sensor, improved developer efficiency, and new operating system and tools support.

[Quoting from Release notes]

Windows 8 Support

Using the Kinect for Windows SDK, you can develop a Kinect for Windows application for a desktop application in Windows 8.

Visual Studio 2012 Support

The SDK supports development with Visual Studio 2012, including the new .NET Framework 4.5.

Accelerometer Data APIs

Data from the sensor’s accelerometer is now exposed in the API. This enables detection of the sensor’s orientation.

Extended Depth Data Is Now Available

CopyDepthImagePixelData() now provides details beyond 4 meters; please note that the quality of data degrades with distance. In addition to Extended Depth Data, usability of the Depth Data API has been improved. (No more bit masking is required.)

Color Camera Setting APIs

The Color Camera Settings can now be optimized to your environment.

  • You can now fine-tune white balance, contrast, hue, saturation, and other settings.
  • To see the full list, launch Kinect Explorer from Developer Toolkit Browser and review the Exposure Settings and Color Settings controls for a full list of settings that can be optimized.

More Control over Decoding

New RawBayer Resolutions for ColorImageFormat give you the ability to do your own Bayer to RGB conversions on CPU or GPU.

New Coordinate Space Conversion APIs

There are several new APIs to convert data between coordinate spaces: color, depth, and skeleton. There are two sets of APIs: one for converting individual pixels and the other for converting an entire image frame.

German Language Pack for Speech Recognition

The SDK ships with a German speech recognition language pack that has been optimized for the sensor’s microphone array.

Infrared Emitter Control API

The sensor’s infrared emitter has previously always been on when the sensor is active, which can cause depth detection degradation in a scenario where multiple sensors are observing the same space. There is a new API (KinectSensor.ForceInfraredEmitterOff) for turning the infrared emitter off.

Introducing New Samples!

  • Basic Interactions-WPF: Demonstrates basic gestures, such as targeting and selecting with a cursor, as well as appropriate feedback mechanisms for an optimal user experience.
  • WPF D3D Interop: Demonstrates DirectX 11 interop with WPF, including full WPF composition of DirectX surfaces.
  • Infrared Basics-WPF, Infrared Basics-D2D: Demonstrates using an infrared stream and displaying an image using depth data.

 

Kinect Studio 1.6.0

Kinect Studio has been updated to support the Infrared, RawBayer, Extended Depth Data, and Accelerometer features.

The Infrared Stream Is Now Exposed in the API

The Kinect sensor’s infrared stream is now exposed as a new ColorImageFormat.

You can use the infrared stream in many scenarios, such as:

  1. Calibrating other color cameras to the Kinect’s depth sensor
  2. Capturing grayscale images in low-light situations
  3. Two infrared samples have been added to the toolkit, and you can also try out infrared in KinectExplorer.

Note that the sensor is not capable of capturing infrared streams and color streams simultaneously. You can, however, capture infrared and depth streams simultaneously.

Support for Virtual Machines

The Kinect for Windows sensor now works on Windows running in a virtual machine and has been tested with the following VM environments:

  • Microsoft HyperV
  • VMWare
  • Parallels

This greatly expands the utility of the Kinect for Windows SDK, as it can now be used on any machine whose native OS supports running Windows in one of the VM packages listed above. In particular, this enables several developer scenarios, such as certain automated testing approaches.

 

Setup and configuration details for using the Kinect with the tested VMs are contained in the Getting Started section of this documentation.

 

Note that only one Kinect at a time will work with a given VM, and you may experience lower frame rates on lower-end computers as some computing resources are consumed by the VM itself.

[Quoting from Release notes]

View release notes for understanding the complete set of feature improvements in v1.6.

 

Download Kinect for Windows SDK v1.6  (Version: 1.6.0.505)

Download Kinect for Windows Developer Toolkit v1.6 (Version: 1.6.0.309)

 

Additional reference about release – read the Kinect for Windows team announcement blog

Kinect for Windows–Development–Required Hardware’s

August 15, 2012 .NET, .NET Framework, All, Kinect SDK, KnowledgeBase, Microsoft, Microsoft SDKs, MSDN, VisualStudio, VS2010, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, XBOX No comments

Abstract: The purpose of this blog post is to provide some insight in to hardware’s and software’s required for kinect for windows development.

Introduction

Kinect for Windows PC is a special set of Kinect hardware released by Microsoft, that designed to use with Windows PC. You require this piece of hardware of production usage of applications developed with Kinect SDK for Windows.

Kinect for Windows hardware is tested, optimized, and designed to operate on computers running Windows 7, Windows 8 Consumer Preview, Windows Embedded Standard 7, and Windows Embedded POSReady 7. It also provides a fully supported end-user experience.

sensor_setup_hero

Kinect for windows developer kit is now available in INDIA for a price of 18-20k (price depends on listing at different online stores) or you can choose to buy from official Microsoft Resellers.

The Kinect for Windows sensor is easy to use. All you need is a sensor, PC, and Kinect for Windows application**.

To use a Kinect for Windows sensor you will need a PC with the following:
  • Windows 7, Windows 8 Consumer Preview, Windows Embedded Standard 7, or Windows Embedded POSReady 7.
  • 32 bit (x86) or 64 bit (x64) processor
  • Dual-core 2.66-GHz or faster processor
  • Dedicated USB 2.0 bus
  • 2 GB RAM

** To use Kinect for Windows with a Windows PC requires a software SDK to be installed on your target development/deployment system. Kinect SDK for Windows contains necessary drivers and API’s for communicating to Kinect Sensor from a supported Windows Operating system.

The Kinect for Windows SDK enables developers to use C++, C#, or Visual Basic to create applications that support gesture and voice recognition by using the Kinect for Windows sensor and a PC or embedded device.

I found some listings on EBAY.IN which will be useful if you are planning to develop Kinect based applications.

Kinect Wall Mount 

http://www.ebay.in/itm/Xbox-360-Kinect-Wall-Mount-IPI-/270921185908?pt=IN_Video_Game_Systems&hash=item3f14293a74#ht_3448wt_923

Kinect for Windows (Retail version for Indian Region – Box Packed)

http://www.ebay.in/itm/Microsoft-Kinect-Windows-PC-New-Box-Sealed-/130747227141?pt=IN_Video_Game_Systems&hash=item1e71245c05#ht_1994wt_1156

kinect-for-windows-box-rm-verge_large

Kinect USB – AC Adaptor (this adaptor is required to connect an Kinect for XBox 360 or Kinect for Windows hardware to Windows PC through USB interface ***)

http://www.ebay.in/itm/USB-220v-AC-Adapter-Power-Supply-Xbox-360-XBOX360-Kinect-Sensor-/251129028878?pt=IN_Video_Game_Systems&hash=item3a7874e10e#ht_3584wt_923

en-US151_Xbox360_Kinect_Power_Supply_3VJ-00001

*** If you have Kinect for Windows box bundle – you would not have to occupy this package separately as bundle includes Kinect for Windows sensor and necessary usb adaptor cable.

Can I use my Kinect for XBOX 360 for Kinect Development?

Kinect for XBOX 360 is the earlier version of Kinect specially released for XBOX 360 gaming consoles. Which provides more tight integration(developed specifically to utilize the capabilities of XBOX) with existing XBOX devices.

YES, as per Microsoft license agreement Kinect for XBOX 360 can be used for personal and non-commercial uses using Kinect for Windows SDK v1.0, but you will not be able to experience the certain features such a near mode**** on Kinect for XBOX 360. 

But for distribution or production deployment you will definitely needs to have commercial or retail version of Kinect for Windows.

For more detail FAQ visit here

**** Near mode is a feature available with Kinect for Windows alone, users who are seated or standing can be tracked within 40 cm (16 inches) of the sensor

The chart below shows the versions of the Kinect for Windows SDK and associated Kinect sensors and runtime.

kinectchart3

SDK beta 2 rights expire June 16, 2016

Latest version for Kinect SDK for Windows v1.5 includes the features such as Facial Recognition, more accurate Facial and Skeleton tracking etc. At the time of writing this blog post I haven’t evaluated whether Kinect for XBOX 360 works with v1.5 of the SDK. But assumes that you will be able to use it for personal and non commercial development purposes.

Remember if you want to deploy it for production usage, you would definitely need a Kinect for Windows hardware.

Hope this blog is helpful for you.

Image & Information Courtesy: Microsoft Kinect for Windows website

Additional Links:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/kinectforwindows

Kinect FAQ | Microsoft Kinect for Windows

Kinect for Windows Near Mode

Near Mode: What it is (and isn’t) – Kinect for Windows Blog – Site …

Kinect for Windows 1.5 Released With Facial, Skeletal Tracking …

Kinect for XBOX 360

Kinect for Windows(SKU: L6M-00015) – Official Reseller INDIA

Buy Kinect for Windows and other peripherals from Microsoft Store

Kinect for Windows Developer Toolkit v1.5.2

August 11, 2012 .NET, All, Kinect SDK, Microsoft, Microsoft SDKs, VisualStudio, Windows, XBOX No comments

The Kinect for Windows Developer Toolkit contains source code samples, Kinect Studio, Face Tracking SDK, and other resources to simplify developing Kinect for Windows applications.

Kinect for Windows Developer Toolkit v 1.5.2 is an incremental update to previous Kinect for Windows Developer Toolkit 1.5.

The release of Developer Toolkit update v1.5.2, which includes:

  • WPFD3Dinterop. This new sample demonstrates DirectX 11 interoperability with Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), which enables powerful DirectX rendering composed with quicker-to-develop WPF user interfaces.
  • Improved Kinect Studio playback. Fixed a known issue from version 1.5.1 of Kinect Studio to ensure that depth-to-color mapping works properly, even if you play an XED clip on a machine without the identical Kinect sensor that recorded it. 
<code>&lt;li&gt;If you have already installed the Kinect for Windows SDK, simply download the new v1.5.2 Developer Toolkit Update. &lt;/li&gt;    &lt;li&gt;If you are new to Kinect for Windows, download both the Kinect for Windows SDK v1.5 and the Developer Toolkit v1.5.2. &lt;/li&gt;   &lt;p&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Download &lt;a href="http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30455"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Kinect for Windows Developer Toolkit v1.5.2&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;font color="#ff0000"&gt;&lt;u&gt;Note:&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; The Kinect for Windows Developer Toolkit requires that the &lt;a href="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=247938"&gt;&lt;u&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Kinect for Windows SDK v1.5&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; be installed&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;u&gt;&lt;font color="#ffc000"&gt;Source&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; - From Team Blog Post: &lt;a href="/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/kinect-for-windows-developer-toolkit-update-v1-5-2.aspx"&gt;http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kinectforwindows/archive/2012/08/03/kinect-for-windows-developer-toolkit-update-v1-5-2.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=255273"&gt;Developer Download&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=260851"&gt;Release Notes&lt;/a&gt;
</code>

Kinect for Windows SDK – Version 1.5 Released

May 23, 2012 .NET, .NET Framework, All, Kinect SDK, Microsoft, Microsoft SDKs, VisualStudio, VS2010, Windows 7, Windows 8 No comments

Microsoft has released Kinect SDK for Windows – Version 1.5  on yesterday which includes improvements over skeleton tracking and facial tracking features.

The Kinect for Windows SDK enables developers to create applications using C++, C# or Visual Basic, which support gesture and voice recognition using the Kinect for Windows sensor and a PC or embedded device.

As per Kinect SDK for Windows Team – announcement blog from Microsoft

We have added more capabilities to help developers build amazing applications, including:

  • Kinect Studio, our new tool which allows developers to record and play back Kinect data, dramatically shortening and simplifying the development lifecycle of a Kinect application. Now a developer writing a Kinect for Windows application can record clips of users in the application’s target environment and then replay those clips at a later time for testing and further development.
  • A set of Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) to guide developers on best practices for the creation of Natural User Interfaces using Kinect.
  • The Face Tracking SDK, which provides a real-time 3D mesh of facial features—tracking the head position, location of eyebrows, shape of the mouth, etc.
  • Significant sample code additions and improvements. There are many new samples in both C++ and C#, plus a “Basics” series of samples with language coverage in C++, C#, and Visual Basic.
  • SDK documentation improvements, including new resources as well as migration of documentation to MSDN for easier discoverability and real-time updates.

Also includes

  • Seated skeleton tracking  – now the kinect can track the person sitting on a chair or couch.
  • Skeletal tracking in Near Range available – It is now possible to receive Skeletal Tracking data when the Kinect camera is in the Near Range Setting.
  • Runtime Improvements –
  • RGB Image quality
  • Joint Orientation – Kinect for Windows runtime provides Joint Orientation information for the skeletons tracked by the ST pipeline. The Joint Orientation is provided in two forms:
    1. A Hierarchical Rotation based on a bone relationship defined on the ST joint structure
    2. An Absolute Orientation in Kinect camera coordinates.

 

As of this release, the SDK has been divided into a core SDK and a developer toolkit:

1. Kinect for Windows SDK – Version 1.5

Includes drivers for using Kinect sensor on a computer running Windows 7, Windows 8 Consumer Preview, and Windows Embedded Standard 7. In addition, the download includes application programming interfaces (APIs) and device interfaces.

Sized around 220MB

2. Kinect for Windows Developer Toolkit  – Version 1.5

Contains source code samples, Kinect Studio, Face Tracking SDK, and other resources to simplify developing applications using the Kinect for Windows SDK.

Sized around 60MB

Note: The Kinect for Windows v1.5 SDK, driver, and runtime are 100% compatible with Kinect for Windows v1.0 application binaries.

Download the latest Kinect SDK for Windows – Version 1.5 visit

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/kinectforwindows/develop/developer-downloads.aspx 

 

Source References  & Read more on

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kinectforwindows/archive/2012/05/21/kinect-for-windows-runtime-and-sdk-version-1-5-released.aspx 

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2404694,00.asp 

and also read Microsoft Kinect for Windows SDK and Toolkit – v1.5 Release Notes