8 ms·

Matt Cutts: $1,000 to the 2 best implementations of the recently-hacked Kinect

121 points by andre3k1 16y ago

wccrawford 16y ago
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 16y ago
  libfreenect has been hacked on a bit to work on OS X; http://vimeo.com/16734124 http://vimeo.com/16734124 for a demo + link to the code.
Zakuzaa 16y ago
I was not going to get myself a Kinect but things are changing pretty fast..
thejash 16y ago
I really really want to buy one of these now just to write python APIs for it. Anyone else interested in that?
- jonafato 16y ago
  I'd be on board to help with that. If you're serious about it, you can find my email in my about section.
- kevinwuhoo 16y ago
  Sounds like a great idea! Email me as well!
- Matt_Cutts 16y ago
  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.
- woodall 16y ago
  It would be cool if someone posted some dumps; video, usb, everything else. I wouldn't mind helping to host it.
zach 16y ago
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!
RBr 16y ago
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.
- olalonde 16y ago
  Perhaps they feel it's going to open up competition to their console offering. If people start building cool PC games with the Kinect sensor, it might hurt Xbox sales. Just a theory.
- dotBen 16y ago
  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.
cyanbane 16y ago
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?
- netaddict 16y ago
  Most of Google's competitors (in search) are already trying to discover/emulate Google's algorithms. There is no need for a contest. Any one who is capable of doing that can build a great search engine instead and earn a lot more money. But a person/team making it easy to write programs that use the Kinect on Linux may not be able to sell the software. So a contest makes sense.
  - cyanbane 16y ago
    Is the valuable information in the emulating of the device, or the algo's used to process it's images? It seems like MS's bread and butter is the processing (and speed of) - more akin to your example of G's search algo, in effect isn't that what he is asking for? Is that not something that someone could sell (to the detriment of MS' research investment). Honestly I think it is great he is holding a contest for this, was just trying to draw a comparison that if this were the other way around (High profile MS employee asking for the breakdown of a Google device) the MS employee would be tar and feather'd. Maybe that is just the hole MS dug for themselves (that Google might now be digging?) On a side note, I think that the vocal capabilities of the device are far over looked. The voice recog is amazing.
- Matt_Cutts 16y ago
  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.
TomOfTTB 16y ago
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)
- olalonde 16y ago
  Right. At first sight, the video sent in by the Kinect looks like it could have been generated by a good computer vision algorithm.
- donohoe 16y ago
  At the very least it will spark the imagination. The beauty of this is that it doesn't have to have any winner before the end of the year to be a huge success. All Matt has to do is keep the conversation going, and get people thinking about what is possible. People will build great things, regardless of prize money, if they are inspired - that might be by Dec 31st or it could be 6 months from now... To this end, its a success.
- bigiain 16y ago
  A lot of the heavy lifting has been done. OpenCv and HandVu ( http://www.movesinstitute.org/~kolsch/HandVu/HandVu.html http://www.movesinstitute.org/~kolsch/HandVu/HandVu.html ) have got a lot of the "Huge project" bit done and packaged into easy to use libraries already.
- Matt_Cutts 16y ago
  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.
pak 16y ago
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 16y ago
  > 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 16y ago
    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 16y ago
      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.
- chrisbroadfoot 16y ago
  Err - nowhere in this article does Matt Cutts say it was "hacked". He says people are hacking on it. In the sense of this definition: http://catb.org/jargon/html/H/hacker.html http://catb.org/jargon/html/H/hacker.html Though, my bet is you're just having a whinge, as opposed to actually commenting on this article.
BoppreH 16y ago
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.
defdac 16y ago
Low discrepancy and well stratified sampling dots it seems. Halton or Hammersley perhaps?
geoka9 16y ago
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!
Luyt 16y ago
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 16y ago
  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.
- blrgeek 16y ago
  Different wavelengths of IR? Different strobing patterns? But that would be hw changes in the Kinect perhaps.

121 points by andre3k1 16y ago

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 16y ago
libfreenect has been hacked on a bit to work on OS X; http://vimeo.com/16734124 http://vimeo.com/16734124 for a demo + link to the code.

Zakuzaa 16y ago

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

thejash 16y ago

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

jonafato 16y ago
I'd be on board to help with that. If you're serious about it, you can find my email in my about section.
kevinwuhoo 16y ago
Sounds like a great idea! Email me as well!
Matt_Cutts 16y ago
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.
woodall 16y ago
It would be cool if someone posted some dumps; video, usb, everything else. I wouldn't mind helping to host it.

zach 16y ago

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!

RBr 16y ago

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.

olalonde 16y ago
Perhaps they feel it's going to open up competition to their console offering. If people start building cool PC games with the Kinect sensor, it might hurt Xbox sales. Just a theory.
dotBen 16y ago
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.

cyanbane 16y ago

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?

netaddict 16y ago
Most of Google's competitors (in search) are already trying to discover/emulate Google's algorithms. There is no need for a contest. Any one who is capable of doing that can build a great search engine instead and earn a lot more money. But a person/team making it easy to write programs that use the Kinect on Linux may not be able to sell the software. So a contest makes sense.
- cyanbane 16y ago
  Is the valuable information in the emulating of the device, or the algo's used to process it's images? It seems like MS's bread and butter is the processing (and speed of) - more akin to your example of G's search algo, in effect isn't that what he is asking for? Is that not something that someone could sell (to the detriment of MS' research investment). Honestly I think it is great he is holding a contest for this, was just trying to draw a comparison that if this were the other way around (High profile MS employee asking for the breakdown of a Google device) the MS employee would be tar and feather'd. Maybe that is just the hole MS dug for themselves (that Google might now be digging?) On a side note, I think that the vocal capabilities of the device are far over looked. The voice recog is amazing.
Matt_Cutts 16y ago
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.

TomOfTTB 16y ago

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)

olalonde 16y ago
Right. At first sight, the video sent in by the Kinect looks like it could have been generated by a good computer vision algorithm.
donohoe 16y ago
At the very least it will spark the imagination. The beauty of this is that it doesn't have to have any winner before the end of the year to be a huge success. All Matt has to do is keep the conversation going, and get people thinking about what is possible. People will build great things, regardless of prize money, if they are inspired - that might be by Dec 31st or it could be 6 months from now... To this end, its a success.
bigiain 16y ago
A lot of the heavy lifting has been done. OpenCv and HandVu ( http://www.movesinstitute.org/~kolsch/HandVu/HandVu.html http://www.movesinstitute.org/~kolsch/HandVu/HandVu.html ) have got a lot of the "Huge project" bit done and packaged into easy to use libraries already.
Matt_Cutts 16y ago
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.

pak 16y ago

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 16y ago
> 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 16y ago
  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 16y ago
    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.
chrisbroadfoot 16y ago
Err - nowhere in this article does Matt Cutts say it was "hacked". He says people are hacking on it. In the sense of this definition: http://catb.org/jargon/html/H/hacker.html http://catb.org/jargon/html/H/hacker.html Though, my bet is you're just having a whinge, as opposed to actually commenting on this article.

BoppreH 16y ago

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.

defdac 16y ago

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

geoka9 16y ago

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!

Luyt 16y ago

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 16y ago
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.
blrgeek 16y ago
Different wavelengths of IR? Different strobing patterns? But that would be hw changes in the Kinect perhaps.