
Microsoft’s Azure Kinect AI Camera - panabee
https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/11/microsofts-399-azure-kinect-ai-camera-is-now-shipping-in-the-u-s-and-china/
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noen
I have 5 of these sitting in my office.

The quality of image (depth and rgb ) is staggering compared to everything
else I've used (zed, realsense, kinect v2, and a couple of others).

They can be chained together for near microsecond timing accuracy.

The mic array is awesome. The IMU is awesome.

But right now I've set them all back in their boxes.

Why? Because without being a vision specialist, there's nothing I can do with
these devices.

The SDK and sample code is so incredibly bare bones, it is almost laughable.

There's no way to make use of those mics for anything. Its literally not in
the SDK.

There's no way to make use of multiple devices in any practical manner. No
point cloud merging, no calibration or shared space alignment.

Then there's the problem that buries deep in the SDK is a binary blob that is
the depth engine. No source, no docs, just a black box.

Also, these cameras require a BIG gpu. Nothing is seemingly happening onboard.
And you're at best limited to 2 kinects per usb3 controller.

All that said, I'm still a very happy early adopter and will continue checking
in every month or two to see if they've filled in enough critical gaps for me
to build on top of.

If any devs in Seattle want to collaborate (or know computer vision well
enough to fill in some of these gaps for the OSS community) let me know :)

~~~
cyrux004
Why did you get 5?

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noen
One of the key features for me is the hardware chaining to make realtime PC
merging easier to resolve. All of the scenarios I can about are realtime
rather than post processing reconstruction.

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desdiv
>The system requirements are Windows® 10 PC or Ubuntu 18.04 LTS...

I must say: I'm liking this new Microsoft.

[0] [https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/kinect-
dk/](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/kinect-dk/)

~~~
vinayan3
> 7th Generation Intel® Core™ i3 Processor (Dual Core 2.4 GHz with HD620 GPU
> or faster), USB 3.0 port, and 4 GB RAM.

Raspberry Pi or a Jetson Nano are probably not gonna work... Seems to be x86
only.

~~~
H8crilA
Given Microsoft's stance on supporting "non-native" setups I think we should
be expecting ARM Linux driver's if this device catches on.

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vogtb
This is really cool! Back in college I used the Kinect dev kit to build proof-
of-concept special effects for live theatre as an independent study project. I
used the Kinect pointed at the face of an actor off stage, ran the resulting
3D data points to some cool algorithms, and then projected the result onto a
screen on stage. The idea was that, for example, in Hamlet instead of having
an actor in make up play the ghost of King Hamlet, you could have this larger-
than-life projection on stage.

This camera is way better quality, so it'l be neat to see the sort of projects
can be done now.

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svd4anything
How does it compare to iPhone sensors used for Face Id? I’m wondering if
mounted to a workstation it could be used to implement a Face id system under
linux.

~~~
jeffchuber
yes. the hard part is implementing FaceID! Lots of papers on the topic:
[https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&as_ylo...](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&as_ylo=2015&q=face+recognition+from+depth&btnG=)

~~~
svd4anything
I was just checking specs on the two devices and it seems that the new Kinect
depth even higher resolution, so it looks like a go in terms of raw input
data.

So my next question would be why would it be significantly harder than regular
facial recognition approaches as found in say OpenCV, naively one would think
more data makes it easier not harder, neglecting hardware
requirements/performance, but just from accuracy perspective from a trivial
refactor of current facial identification algorithms.

I’m not talking about identification of people moving or far away but straight
looking at from a fairly close distance.

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lionpixel
Right now the SDK supports body pose estimation without finger joints. Does
anybody know or work on a model including finger joints?

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ramraj07
Does anyone know if this will work with Mac running Windows in pArallels?
Really wanna tinker with it but stuck with a Mac :(

~~~
valgaze
I did some Kinect V2 experiments on Bootcamp and it worked like a charm

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jbrooksuk
I remember seeing The V Motion Project [0] when it first came out. It'd be
good to see other people approach this too!

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YERtJ-5wlhM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YERtJ-5wlhM)

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nojvek
This youtube video is definitely a chapter inspired/stolen from Apple's ads.
Good on Microsoft though.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJglCYFiodI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJglCYFiodI)

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grrowl
The "Order" link goes to a 404 outside of the United States/for languages
other an en-us

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rememberlenny
From what I understand, this is nice if you are trying to use multiple devices
together. The Kinect's API makes that very easy with Azure (read: multiple
cameras scanning a single location in real time, via a robot).

If you just need the same sensors for depth, but significantly cheaper, then
look at occipital.

Link: [https://occipital.com](https://occipital.com)

~~~
modeless
Occipital uses structured light. Kinect uses time of flight. Completely
different sensor technology.

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takanori
I’m interested in buying one and doing a hack project. Anyone interested in
brainstorming with me?

~~~
kodachi
what about something like this (holoportation):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7d59O6cfaM0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7d59O6cfaM0)

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beagle3
Can they be used as a kinect replacement for xbox360/xenia?

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sansnomme
How does this compare to Intel's RealSense?

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joewee
What are some potential use cases?

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lozaning
I've been wanting to build gesture based control of my smarthome for a while.

~~~
rememberlenny
This would definitely be overkill. You could do that with 5$ cameras and some
ML.

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BubRoss
[https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/kinect-
dk/](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/kinect-dk/)

Here is the actual Microsoft link just in case you don't want blog spam that
is nearly unreadable on a phone.

