Kinect n' JS

just thought i would make a general post with about the kinect and http://www.zigfu.com

last year i made this video with kineme's kinect plugin and unity... which is pretty much my most popular video on vimeo.

the plugin for some reason is not working for me in lion unfortunately ;( however on a brighter note http://www.zigfu.com has compiled a one click install of kinect openNI and the openNI sensor hack plus added some interesting browser js functionality to the kinect.

http://zigfu.com/browserplugin.html

previously in order to skeleton track with openNI on mac... it was a very lengthy process that required mad terminal fu. I'm sure your all familiar with how long it takes to just install the usb drivers via macports needed for the kinect. well not any longer. ;) the plugin above takes care of that process.

so if you use tryplex toolkit kinect comps or some similar process this again takes care of all that required terminal fu. which frees you to let other people that may have a kinect and not be as computer savvy to play with your kinect toys ;)

i know there are some new kinect goodies out there like ni-mate or synapse ofxKinect but this plugin lets me play with some of my older kinect comps. some I'm sharing this information in hopes that someone else will find this useful.

here is my second iteration of the basketball for the kinect.

attached you will find a mac and or pc game you can play with your kinect. first install the above mentioned plugin... then use a push or wave type gesture to pick up the ball and throw like normal. see above video... when you drop your hands the level restarts to take another shot. so if you want the ball to go in the basket follow through by pointing at the basket.

zigfu is pretty interesting. for instance this bit of js code will print skelton data which you can then pass to qc in the web browser, or possibly the cogee webkit plugin I'm not sure i haven't tried that yet.

var engager = zig.EngageUsersWithSkeleton(1);
engager.addEventListener('userengaged', function(user) {
   console.log('User engaged: ' + user.id);
 
   user.addEventListener('userupdate', function(user) {
      console.log('Head position: ' + user.skeleton[zig.Joint.Head].position);
   });
});
engager.addEventListener('userdisengaged', function(user) {
   console.log('User disengaged: ' + user.id);
});
zig.addListener(engager);
[code] 
 
once the plugin is installed you can then go to http://zig.tv to test to make sure your kinect is working with your browser ;)