Connecting the Kinect

In this first task, I will guide you through the installation of the OpenNI framework and a library from PrimeSense (the company that developed the Kinect for Microsoft). We will use OpenNI example programs to test our installation.

Engage Thrusters

1. At the time of writing, the most recent version of the OpenNI framework was 2.1 Beta, but the Processing framework that we are going to use for our next task requires Version 1.5.4 of the OpenNI framework. Open the site http://www.openni.org/openni-sdk/openni-sdk-history-2/ in your browser, as shown in the following screenshot, and select the download package for your platform:

   

2. If you are running Linux or Mac OS X, open a Terminal window, go to the directory where you downloaded the file, and unpack it using the tar command; make sure to unpack it as root by running the install.sh script:

   tar xvjf openni-bin-dev-linux-x86-v1.5.4.0.tar.bz2
   cd OpenNI-Bin-Dev-Linux-x86-v1.5.4.0
   sudo  ./install.sh
   

3. On Windows, just execute the MSI...