When the Kinect launched, Adafruit Industries ran a contest for the first person who released open-source code to extract video and depth from the Kinect. Adafruit also ended up donating to the EFF after the contest was over.
When I was in grad school, I would have loved to have a device like the Kinect. So I decided to run my own contest:
The first $1000 prize goes to the person or team that writes the coolest open-source app, demo, or program using the Kinect. The second prize goes to the person or team that does the most to make it easy to write programs that use the Kinect on Linux.
It’s time to announce the prize winners. There’s been so many cool things going on with the Kinect that instead of two winners, I ended up declaring seven $1000 winners.
Open-source Application or Demo
I picked two winners in this category.
- Tomoto Washio for Kinect Ultra Seven. This program lets you transform into Ultra Seven with lots of different powers. It’s a really fun demo–check out the videos:
- Tiago Serra and the SenseBloom team for XBox Kinect OSCeleton. The application sends 3D tracked body skeletons through the OSC protocol. Essentially, it’s a do-it-yourself motion capture system:
People that have made it easier to write programs for the Kinect
A ton of people have made the Kinect more accessible on Linux or helped the Kinect community. I ended up picking five winners.
All of these individuals pushed things forward so others can develop great programs on the Kinect more easily. Congratulations to all the winners, and to everyone doing neat things with their Kinect!
Great projects! Does this mean you gave away $7000 to the winners instead of $2000? Wow.
Awesome job and congrats to the Kinect community!
Mo, that’s correct.
Love the videos and great to see so many people bothering to take the time to get involved and put the effort in.
Why you don’t talk a little bit more about the linux projects to make easier to program?
Probably the two videos are really cool, but the important job is to make easy to the people make this staff in their homes.
Awesone in anyway.
$7000 in prizes! wow that’s great. congrats to all the winners.
Full body gaming rocks!
Haha, ideas like these might actually get me back into gaming again. We really are on the tipping point (almost there at least).
This is some cool stuff. Just amazing. There is such brilliance and talent in this world.
Thanks for this info(amongst other things) Matt. I really enjoyed it. I’m ready to start YouTubin’ to see what else out there exists.
Congrats to the winners, and especially to the host for recognizing such talent and providing more than 3x the prizes.
yeah Awesome I wish I’d win 7 k 😛
When the Wii was released I was pretty impressed by the motion controls. It was a real unique way to control a game, but when I was in a Best Buy and saw the Kinect demo set up I was floored. I spent a few minutes playing the bowling demo and was in awe. I really can’t wait to get one for myself.
I am also VERY happy to see that Microsoft is embracing the “hackers” of the Kinect.
Cool contests. Like the connection to Linux.
We have a Kinect in our office, and I suspect it’s not long before our engineers start to play around. Is there a list out there of what developers have been doing with the Kinect?
Wow, I had no idea that you could develop things like that for the Kinect. Congrats to all the winners!
I remember ultraseven when I was a child 😉 . But, it’s great project.
Love the super hero from Tomoto Washio …
I know I’m not the only one who bought a Kinect for the awesome hacks people are creating (the games are horrible) – but the technology itself is amazing and I can’t wait to see what else can be done with it!
Congrats guys, those are impressive.
Microsoft are going to launch an SDK for the Kinect this spring, according to the BBC:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12531127
which one wins for mac osx? thanks for supporting this development!
I thought the games for the kinect were pretty impressive, this is something else though!
I cant stop laughing…I love it..To be honest I am rather out of it with games. I think the last time I used a consol was the Saga Master System 2…
I must say, if someone just happens to look through the window when you were making the first video it may come across as a little strange…..