Kinect development. What about hardware to use?

Question

I want to develop a Kinect app. My question is: Do I need some special hardware or can I use my own XBox and Kinect. In other words, will I use my Kinect to test and use my app after finished?

Answer 1

You can use your Kinect sensor on quite a few platforms:

1. You can use windows and the official Kinect for windows SDK. The SDK has a c++ API as well as a .NET API.

2. You can use windows/mac with the Zigfu dev bundle. This will let you use the OpenNI interface to communicate with the Kinect. OpenNI also has c/c++, and .NET API as well as Unity3d bindings.

If you want to develop for the XBox you'll need an Xbox development kit.

Answer 2

You can use the Xbox Kinect to develop and test all your applications, the noticeable change on the hardware is the new "near mode", which allows you to track pixels closer to the sensor/camera:

Near mode = 40cm up to 3 meters. Default mode = 80cm up to 4 meters.

The other changes are basically on the SDK (like JointID are now called JointType), new methods and objects with easier and improved controls, and all of them work with the Xbox Kinect.

But keep in mind that if you want to sell your app or something like that, you'll need to use the Kinect for Windows hardware, as the license for the Xbox Kinect only allows it to be sold with an Xbox.