Making Kinect and Processing work on Mac. - macos

I am trying to run some of the examples with running Kinect and Processing together
http://www.shiffman.net/p5/kinect/
I have installed everything in the directions. However, when I run the processing code, it says "Kinect not found". I have done nothing except for:
1. install processing
2. install relevant libraries
3. connect kinect to computer
I have a feeling I am missing something obvious here. I am just confused because this particular library only works on Macs, but the Kinect generally works on Windows. Any guidance towards making my Mac recognize there is a kinect connected to it would be great. Thanks!

You can use a Kinect on OSX, Windows or Linux depending on the drivers/SDK (e.g. Kinect for Windows will only run on Windows 7 and up, but OpenKinect/libreenect or OpenNI will run on the above mentioned).
I'm not sure if you need to install the libusb-devel driver or not, but you should give that a go using MacPorts for example:
sudo port install git-core
sudo port install libtool
sudo port install libusb-devel
Also the Processing OpenKinect wrapper is a bit limited. You can't get accelerometer data for example. Other than the depth,RGB,IR streams with OpenNI also supplies, motor control is the only extra feature. On the other hand OpenNI also comes with hand tracking, gestures, skeleton and scene detection, etc. I recommend giving SimpleOpenNI a go.

Related

How do I run PovRay on MacOS (Catalina 10.15.2)?

after some time I tried to install the newest PovRay (3.6 or 3.7) on my Mac.
Before, I only installed PovRay through ports and all went fine, I could use a full PovRay environment. If I try it now, PovRay won't start on Mac, it will crash, complaining something about "could not start in MainThread" or so. However, I´ve uninstalled PovRay with "port" because it was only the renderer, but before there also were provided a GUI which made development in PovRay very comfortable.
Because this GUI was not provided by "port", I tried to download PovRay from poverty.org: they provide a seemingly PovRay-"distribution" but only for Windows, I didn't found the MacOS Distribution. I downloaded some sort of distribution from another source, but that didn't do anything.
Then I´ve downloaded the PovRay source like in the "good old linux days" and tried to compile the source on my own, like in the good old days. Even that failed. And this is the first time I could cross-compile a linux source code since several decades. It seems as if MacOS is no longer fully supported by open-source (?).
However, while PovRay can be installed with "port", only the renderer is installed, it seems as if MacOS is not really supported by open source. Or is there an other distribution where the whole PovRay is provided?
1) In the meantime I´ve found a distribution which would work "out of the box": http://megapov.inetart.net/
I do not now this site, but it is working so far with Povray 3.8
2) I have also found an explanation and a workaround for the crash of PovRay in the terminal: there is assumable a new security "feature" in Mac OS now which prevents spawned threads to access resources on the computer like the (Desktop) window and main processes: if PovRay is rendering and trying to start the rendering window, Mac OS raises a "NSInternalInconsistencyException" and the process crashes. In case of PovRay, there is a "workaround" in prohibiting PovRay to write to the Desktop:
povray DISPLAY=off scene.pov
It simply renders without displaying the rendered scene to the desktop

Ubuntu 14.10 AMD graphics card driver

I'm having some problems with my graphics cards driver and I hoped you guys could help me out. I mispurposeadly changed the x.org's driver to a propietary one and ended with my computer falling apart with the login loop problem, typical of Thrusty Thar. However, I managed via console to purge the fglrx driver using sudo apt-get purge and managed to access the desktop graphically. After that none of the usb ports or sd slot worked, nor did the graphics card, only the ethernet port, so I upgraded Ubuntu Thrusty Thar to Utopical Unicornwith the hope it would fix the driver's problem. It didn't. Can you help me find a solution to my problem?
In the worst case scenario, you can reinstall Ubuntu. This should fix your issue.
Alternatively, you can upgrade to the latest Ubuntu 16.04 LTS version and that should have some bug fixes that solve your problem.
I recommend using the open source driver that is already installed and in use when you first install Ubuntu. Only change the open source driver to a proprietary one if there are graphical glitches or other problems with your graphics. I have never had problems with the open source graphics drivers.
Finally, make sure that you install all the available software updates since they may fix some issues too.

OpenNI Mac OS X 10.8 Kinect times out

Currently I'm having some trouble with my kinect senor.
I installed the following libraries via homebrew:
libusb +universal (1.0.9)
sensor-kinect (0.91-5.1.0.25)
openni (stable-1.5.2.23)
NITE (1.5.2.21)
When I try to run the example Sample-NiSimpleRead located at sample/Bin/x64-Release from the openni framework the following error occurs after about 20 seconds:
UpdateData failed: A timeout has occurred when waiting for new data!
My kinect is model 1473.
I tried the steps in this post Kinect hangs up suddenly after working pretty well a few seconds. How can I fix it?
But my libfreenect library says that it found one device but couldn't open it.
Does anybody know how to fix this?
Since you mentioned you're not using an USB extension, this shouldn't be the issue.
I had issues with 10m ones. 5 and 7m active USB extensions worked fine though.
I was looking at the order of install, which is important: should be OpenNI/Nite then Sensor.
Also, for a Kinect with OpenNI you should use Avin's modified SensorKinect driver.
In conclusion try this:
Install OpenNI 1.5.4.0
Install Nite 1.5.2.21
Install Avin's SensorKinect
After you insall the above in that order, connect your sensor
and try to run of the samples(like NiSimpleViewer).
This should work(famous last words). If not, try to access another computer for a few minutes to test the same. This way you should have the sensor running at least on one computer and work out if the issue could be with the sensor or with the computer( and it's usb port/internal usb bus).
You shouldn't need libfreenect/libusb, but on osx you can use both at the same if you want, as long as you don't access the same sensor resources (so you can get accelerometer values from libfreenect and scene segmentation from openni)

Kinect for Windows with Processing and SimpleOpenNI on Apple OSX stops working after 20 sec

I am using Kinect for Windows (not for XBOX) on Apple iMac 3GHz 4GB 10.8.3. The Kinect is connected with USB cable to iMac and with power supply.
Software: I have installed XCode, XQuartz, MaxPorts, CMake, then libtool, libusb, OpenNI SDK v1.5.4.0, SensorKinect, and NiTE v1.5.2.21.
I am running Processing 2.0.8 with SimpleOpenNI 0.27 library.
Any example from SimpleOpenNI runs, but after approximatly 20sec Kinect stops working and freezes.
(I need to say that the green led is blinking constantly but Kinect is still working, since at least for short period time I can get e.g. the depth image etc.)
Any ideas why is not working constantly? Maybe I need Kinect for Xbox in the end? Is there any power supply issues with Apple computer? (I have tested the same Kinect device on PC and it worked fine)
This is a bit late, but for others finding this problem that I also found, try installing OpenKinect within Processing and running one of the sample sketches (like Average Point Tracking) for a moment, closing, then trying your Simple OpenNI sketch. I'm also using .27 (because I couldn't get later versions to work) and this fixes the problem, but you have to do it every time you plug the camera back in or restart the OS. Hope this helps someone else.

libusb-win32: Automated installation of a driver filter

I've faced a problem getting my libusb-w32 based program to detect devices.
The program has to detect digital cameras, and I need to automatically install driver filter for any new camera to be detected without any manual work. 
I've used install-filter i --class={6BDD1FC6-810F-11D0-BEC7-08002BE2092F} , i. e. installing filter for MTP devices, and it seemed to work. But today I tried it on a clean machine and found out it actually only seemed that way. Tried install-filter with different parameters - no luck.
The only way I was able to detect devices at all was to use the inf-wizard.exe. It installed the driver, enabling my program to detect devices, but also disrupting the original Windows functionality for digital cameras. Then, I've uninstalled the libusb driver, installed the original windows driver back, executed install-filter i --class={6BDD1FC6-810F-11D0-BEC7-08002BE2092F}  - and the program is still able to detect devices.
The question is: how to automate the process so that any new camera is detected without any work required from a user?
Update:
I'll shorten the question. It seems that when I install a driver with inf-wizard.exe, it does something besides installing the driver itself. I need to know what, exactly.
Thanks in advance.
In case someone has similar problem - the answer is here:
https://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_name=749401313049992%40web78.yandex.ru&forum_name=libusb-win32-devel

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