
Matt Cutts: $1,000 to the 2 best implementations of the recently-hacked Kinect - andre3k1
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/open-kinect-contest/
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TomOfTTB
I don’t mean to be a downer but I’m not sure how productive this is. I applaud
his wanting to jump start something but this is a huge project.

Think about it. Just because the drivers let your computer see a hand doesn’t
mean your computer can recognize it is a hand. That has to be done in software
and doing that will be a massive amount of work. And that's just figuring out
it's a hand. Not telling the program what a hand does. Anyone who has used a
Kinect on the Xbox knows the software plays a huge part in its execution.

I’d wager the configuration program alone took Microsoft far longer than the 6
allotted weeks this contest gives.

I’d much rather see a high profile person like Matt Cutts start a fund for
open source development of a Kinect library for Linux and then giving people
the time to accomplish something great (it's certainly a project I'd be
willing to donate to)

~~~
Matt_Cutts
Half of the prize money is set aside for people who make it easier to work
with the Kinect, e.g. working on a Linux library. Mainly I want to get people
excited about doing neat things with very cool device.

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wccrawford
I love the sense of community this is building already. Microsoft's initial
'don't hack our hardware!' statement only served to bring more attention to
it.

I've even got some ideas for games for it, but of course, I don't have a
license to officially program for it, and I don't think it works with the XNA.
This means I have a chance to use with with the PC instead, though. If I can
just find the time. ;)

~~~
Zev
libfreenect has been hacked on a bit to work on OS X;
<http://vimeo.com/16734124> for a demo + link to the code.

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zach
Wow, that picture and video linked to the article is fantastic. I actually
never heard about how the Kinect worked, but once you see that you really get
it. I'm a lot more impressed now that I know about the hardware details!

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Zakuzaa
I was not going to get myself a Kinect but things are changing pretty fast..

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cyanbane
I love reading Cutts and I love my Kinect and would love to see exactly what
he is asking for, however if a well known MS engineer conducted a contest on
discovering/emulating the software* behind Google's search appliance, do you
think it would be met with embrace or venom by the HN community?

~~~
Matt_Cutts
Just to clarify, I have no idea what Microsoft's Xbox software or user
experience is like, and I have no interest in duplicating that specifically. I
hope that people come up with entirely new ideas and apps.

Also, I should make clear that I'm doing this personally; the fact that I work
for Google has nothing to do with it. If anything, I think Microsoft deserves
props for bringing such cool technology to market. I hope Microsoft does
really well with the Kinect and sells tons of them.

~~~
cyanbane
If they embrace the non 360 owning community, it doesn't sound like they will
be losing money ( <http://bit.ly/aEUq3p> ). That being said though I don't
think that as a person in the tech community that you do not have some inkling
about what the UX of this device entails as MS has developed it (re "I have no
idea what Microsoft's Xbox software or user experience is like"). As it has
been plastered from Alpha to Oprah.

~~~
Matt_Cutts
I actually am pretty in-the-dark about the UX of the Kinect and how it works
with the Xbox. I don't have a Kinect myself yet, for example. I have an Xbox
but haven't turned it on in several months, mainly because it's so loud (like,
helicopter loud. Are newer Xboxen quieter?). I'm not much of a gamer, other
than Portal and Katamari a few years ago. I've yet to watch an episode of
Oprah, either. :)

I do hope that the Kinect cost of materials is low enough that MSFT doesn't
lose money on each Kinect they sell. But I have to think that the
tinkerer/maker community is much smaller than the mass market for video
gamers. My guess is that Kinect purchases for Linux will be a barely blip on
MSFT's radar.

~~~
ephermata
The new XBox S (the matte black one) is much quieter than the old XBoxes. This
YouTube video gives some idea of the difference, throwing in a listen with a
PS3 as well: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5QpoKwVcSk>

The Kinect experience so far is targeted at a wider audience than the
traditional gamer. My mother, for example, absolutely loves the Kinect. She
particularly likes the Tai Chi and yoga trainers in the "Your Shape" game. I
didn't expect it to take off with her the way it did, but it's the first video
game system where she really wants to play it.

Another thing: there are several different interfaces embodied in the launch
titles around the same basic Kinect capabilities and interactions. If you want
to develop new user experiences, now is a good time to check out what people
are doing before everything settles into place. So it's worth at least
visiting a friend who has one.

(Disclosure: I work at Microsoft. Speaking only for myself here, of course.)

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thejash
I really really want to buy one of these now just to write python APIs for it.
Anyone else interested in that?

~~~
Matt_Cutts
Right on! I would love it if someone could plug in a Kinect and starting doing
cool things in Python in five minutes or so.

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Luyt
Matt poses the idea of using two or more Kinects at the same time to
reconstruct a true 3D-view of the room. But when I watch the video and see how
a Kinect determines depth -by projecting infrared light dots- I have my doubt
wether this will work. I suspect the the two Kinects will interfere with
eachother.

~~~
greendestiny
You'd have to pose them to be non-overlapping. You could probably have a bash
at trying to unravelling overlapping projections but I doubt you'd have much
luck. Although with two of them you could maybe do a first pass active stereo
- but I don't think you can get access to the low level IR camera output
anyway.

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BoppreH
I give it two weeks before the open source demos become cooler than
Microsoft's.

Maybe not doing the same things (I remember they have a database of human
positions and bone structure), but at least as good looking as.

Or maybe just plain useful for non-gamers.

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geoka9
I wonder if Kinect (or several of them) can be used to create a do-it-yourself
motion capture kit. Being able to do mocap for your own hobby on a hobbyist
budget would be very cool!

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RBr
I understand that money is ultimately the answer to my question... however...

Why haven't Microsoft or Sony, or better yet some video game maker we've never
heard of, realized that building a platform to encourage "hacking" would make
a lot of money. If Apple's App store has thought us anything it's that people
want to be engaged on a deep level with devices such as video game consoles.

I must be missing something.

~~~
dotBen
_Why haven't Microsoft ... realized that building a platform to encourage
"hacking" would make a lot of money._

Because while it would make some money (perhaps 'a lot'), forcing people to
buy their locked-in $60 games (and often more like $80 in UK and Europe) will
make them even more.

I'm a total open-advocate so the above saddens me but that's why consoles are
locked to license holders who buy access to build games for them.

Keep in mind that even at $150, the Kinnect is probably being sold at
cost/loss at the moment so essentially they are subserdising the hardware to
make money on the software.

My guess is that if "Open Kinnect" becomes a trend with a lot of applications,
you can be sure someone like Logitech/etc will bring out an 'open' bundle of
the same technology stack that can utilize the foundation of apps. But it will
probably cost more as it won't be subsidized like MS are with Kinnect.

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pak
Jesus, it was reverse-engineered, not "hacked". Did Linux engineers "hack"
into every single piece of hardware they wrote drivers for? The overuse of
this term in headlines drives me nuts. It's not like people can drive by your
house and break into your XBox by waving their arms. And that's the colloquial
meaning, which has sadly displaced the original, more positive meaning.

~~~
RickHull
> _Jesus, it was reverse-engineered, not "hacked". Did Linux engineers "hack"
> into every single piece of hardware they wrote drivers for?_

I think reverse-engineering definitely falls under the "hacking" umbrella. I
would go so far as to call the winner of the Adafruit prize a _hacker_ , not
to mention kernel devs who manage to get a device working without proper
documentation.

~~~
pak
Yes, I would call people that work on this hackers in the older more positive
sense, but the common, inflammatory meaning of the word "hacked" usually has
something to do with a security exploit. As in Headline: "Blahblah.com was
recently hacked." As a headline, you would never think that means blahblah was
reverse-engineered, but that it was vandalized or people's accounts were
stolen.

~~~
Pheter
I see it as a positive thing that the media is shifting to using the word
'hacked' as it was intended to be. Sure it may confuse some people but over
time it may return to being used exclusively in the older sense.

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defdac
Low discrepancy and well stratified sampling dots it seems. Halton or
Hammersley perhaps?

