Arduino and Kinect Projects: Design, Build, Blow Their Minds

C H A P T E R  2

Kinect Basics

by Enrique Ramos

The Kinect, shown in Figure 2-1, was launched on November 4, 2010 and sold an impressive 8 million units in the first 60 days, entering the Guinness World Records as the “fastest selling consumer electronics device in history.” The Kinect was the first commercial sensor device to allow the user to interact with a console through a natural user interface (using gestures and spoken commands instead of a game controller). The Kinect is the second pillar of this book, so we will spend this chapter getting you acquainted with it.

In the following pages, you will learn the story of this groundbreaking device, its hardware, software, and data streams. You will learn what a structured-light 3D scanner ...