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Studying vision, I would like to play with the Microsoft Kinect.

Can I use it on my Mac?

I have not found any Library for Mac and fear virtualization on my laptop to use Linux.

Bart
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500
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3 Answers3

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I've accessed Kinect data on OSX using openframeworks and the ofxKinect addon (which uses libfreenect and libusb). It's not the only option, just I've used and worked 'out of the box'.

Community
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George Profenza
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  • Thank You George, I will look into it now ! – 500 Oct 01 '11 at 00:04
  • I am a novice to programming and if I am ready to learn new language, my sole experience yet is on Mathematica and Matlab :-( As a result your reference are yet opaque to me. Where would you suggest me to start ? My dream is to get the images matrices back to Mathematica to work on it there. Any hope for such thing ? By the way I really like stuff you have done, really impressive/creative. – 500 Oct 01 '11 at 00:14
  • Did a quick search and couldn't find much for Mathematica at the moment unfortunately. I did find a few things for Matlab though: [Kinect to Matlab via mex](http://acberg.com/kinect/) and [Kinect Matlab](http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/30242-kinect-matlab). Couldn't test though as I don't have Matlab on my machine( used Octave in college :( ). Thank you for the kind words. It's great/encouraging to see scientists/artists. – George Profenza Oct 01 '11 at 12:15
  • I start to think that "solutions" lie in between science/art & engineering. each have so much to bring to the other ! This is also why I want to play with kinect ! Any thought s on this ?http://www.freenect.com/how-to-get-the-kinect-working-on-mac-os-x . I ahem never really used the terminal but I get this while trying to run the lines "No targets specified and no makefile found." :-( – 500 Oct 01 '11 at 12:31
  • @500 Sorry, didn't have time to reply. It's usually the `./configure`,`make install`,`install` commands to build a library from source in Terminal, but libfreenect also needs a patch from libusb. Hope you've managed to compile/get started. @Artium Yes, but again, via openframeworks and [addons](https://github.com/gameoverhack/ofxOpenNI). Initially had issues because of the [osx version](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5104344/how-can-i-get-past-a-library-not-loaded-issue), afterwards the samples worked. – George Profenza Oct 04 '11 at 01:16
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Try downloading the Zigfu Dev Bundle for mac (http://www.zigfu.com) - that should get you up to speed with kinect development on mac.

Shlomo Zippel
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Using Kinect on Mac is as easy as ordering Latte. But there is also a lot of confusion on the Internet and sites that seem to be old and give you the wrong advice such as installing a separate sensor library in addition to OpenNI. Just go to the basic website and download SDK for your MAC: http://www.openni.org/openni-sdk/

You might need to have prerequsities though I assume you have already installed them, such as:

sudo port install libtool 
sudo port install doxygen
 restart comp
sudo port install libusb-devel +universal
 Troubleshooting:
"sudo rm -f /opt/local/lib/libusb-1.0.0.dylib"
"sudo port clean libusb"
"sudo port install libusb +universal"

No need to compile anything. You should be able to run ./Samples/Bin/SimpleViewer right away after you run sudo ./install.sh.The PROBLEM might be that you have already tried to run it unsuccessfully and put a camera in the wrong state. I have seen errors such as USB intercase cannot be set etc. as a side effect.

Running your code in Eclipse is a different story and may require a few extra steps and changing your Ubuntu code (using openni namespace, different includes, etc.)

Vlad
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  • Vlad, I was looking forward to doing a Project where I would use the skeletal tracking algorithm, using the Kinect sensor. I came across this post just then. I am just in the phase of getting things started and I could not succeed in gathering around enough information to set up stuff up till now. This is primarily I believe because I am running OSX v(10.10). A lot of tutorials I saw refer to how to do the same on OSX v10.9. Plus a lot of broken links on all old posts make it quite confusing among different versions as well. Could you please help me up with how to setup on 10.10? Many thanks – TheLuminor Sep 30 '15 at 07:18
  • hi, I am not a system guy, sorry. Most of the problem with set up stem from skipping some steps rather than from OS version though. As for Skeletal tracking, the recent time of flight Kinect made some advances by tracking more joints. There is a sample program that may work out of box. I do remember though a lot of restarts and "pull USB cable out" set backs I experienced. – Vlad Sep 30 '15 at 16:32