4

Hi and thanks for looking!

Background

You know how some universal remote controls can "record" the infrared signals from an OEM remote? I would like to do the same using the Kinect.

After doing so, I am hoping to use a series of tones from the sound card to replicate/blast the infrared signals when the user gives a speech command or gesture (I have an infrared blaster that accepts a tone from a headphone jack and converts it to an IR signal).

I would like to do this for a multitude of applications: recording signals from my TV remote control, from my mini RC helicopter remote, etc.

Here is a link to something similar using Kinect and Arduino, but I don't think it has to be this complicated if you have an infrared "recorder".

I am using Kinect SDK for Windows, C#, .NET 4

Question

Assuming that the heuristic below is appropriate (if you have a better approach please tell me), how do I do the following:

  1. Using my Kinect, record the signal emitted from an IR device.
  2. Convert that signal to a sound file (.wav, .mp3, etc).
  3. Recall and play a given sound file when an appropriate speech command or gesture command is issued.

Of the questions above, #'s 1 & 2 are most important.

Final Note

If I can cobble together a solution for the recorder, I will open the source for all. Please leave a comment if you would like to be notified about that source if/when it happens.

Thanks!

Community
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Matt Cashatt
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    the Kinect has not one infrared sensor, but an array of 640 * 480 "sensors". --> you will have to chose _what_ you want to record, how you want to sample the incoming data. --> i think that will be the most difficult part to identify the important information out of the whole noise – fixagon Mar 21 '12 at 14:56
  • @fix_likes_coding--Good point, and obviously one that speaks to my lack of knowledge in the IR world. Still, if a $10 universal remote can do it, there *must* be a way for Kinect to do it. Thanks for your input! – Matt Cashatt Mar 21 '12 at 15:00
  • This has nothing to do about IR world. You think "sensor" (1 bit) but Kinect has no sensor, it has a CAMERA. With many pixels. Otherwise it woudl be totally useless. – TomTom Mar 23 '12 at 16:14

1 Answers1

5

Can't be done.

The IR camera in Kinect will be running at 30Hz maybe (30 frames per second), where as the pulses from a remote could be up to 120 bits/second. So in otherwords the camera will miss most pulses as it is not high enough resolution in time.

Source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_IR

weston
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