Kinect hacked for OS X
Irony value high: motion tech first offered to Mac maker
The open source driver for Microsoft's Xbxo 360 Kinect add-on has been ported to Mac OS X - an irony given that Kinect developer PrimeSense originally punted the motion detection tech at Apple.
Kinect was released in the UK this week, but debuted in the US a little sooner than that, giving coder AlexP the chance to run Kinect off a Windows machine before the peripheral had even shipped over here.
Since then hacker Hector Martin a chance to code up libfreenect, an open source driver for Kinect. Mac hacker Theo Watson last night posted the results of his attempt to tweak the driver so it'll work under OS X.
Martin's work can be downloaded here, Watson's here. Here's Watson's video of the driver running:
Says Watson: "Most of the code is unchanged but there are some changes to libusb which were needed to get it running - and a few extra libusb commands - as well as some tweaking of the transfer sizes."
According to PrimeSense CEO Inon Beracha, Apple had the chance to get there ahead of Watson.
Beracha told website Cult of Mac this week that he pitched the technology to Apple in 2008, but - perhaps not surprisingly - the Mac maker wanted to tie him up in red tape, he claims, so he quickly took his toy elsewhere. ®
COMMENTS
Hacking...
In fact, the act of deciphering an undocumented piece of hardware, reverse-engineering its command and control codes and decoding its data stream, and writing a driver for it from scratch is the true, original meaning of "hacking".
Not quite
Why do people always forget to factor in the development costs?
Sure, the parts cost £35, but do you think people work for free?
Y'know the people who created the design, designed the hardware, PCB, casing, packaging, software, advertising, programming API and so on. They all get paid, some more than others.
A DVD costs pence to make, but the content costs millions to film, edit and so on.
Real Apple TV
If Apple produce a physical TV / internet / games device this might have been useful.
If by Red Tape he means Apple wanted to have exclusivity then I don't blame them. Can you patent the use of 2 cameras, IR + 2 mics ? In most of the world, you can't patent the idea (i.e. use imaging / sound to control a games device) or even the software.
Jobs Halo because, well, it's controversial on this site to even think Apple make sensible decisions.
Probably make a white version
and charge 500 sovs for it.
Interesting...
Anybody reckon this could be useful tech for home security systems?
