Kinect Tutorials

In June 2011, Microsoft released the Kinect SDK. This development kit has inspired lots of teachers and educators to try something different in the classroom. I was one of these teachers. I saw it’s potential and with some of my programming experience from university (5 years ago….) I set out to try and get my head around the Kinect SDK. I have had some difficulties and have had to teach myself many things from scratch.

It was because of this, that I thought… hmmm maybe other teachers may need some tips out there and I have decided to launch a page of tutorials to help you all. I have included a table of links to my tutorials with a description. Please feel free to comment on any of these as it is really good to hear about how these may have benefitted others.

I hope to include standard c# tutorials in here as well because I think these are just as important aspects to learn!

Lesson	Description
Lesson 1 – 20th November 2011 (BETA 2)	Learn about how to build a simple sound board using the Kinect SDK. Sample source included to help you out. (4 Part Lesson)
Lesson 2 – 20th December 2011 (BETA 2)Lesson 2 – 13th February – Full SDK RELEASE	Learn how to include gestures such as putting your hand above your head.
Lesson 3 – 21st December 2011 (BETA 2)Lesson 3 – 13th February – FULL SDK RELEASE	Learn how to add and manipulate text boxes in the Kinect SDK. Update the text box to say where you joint is.
Lesson 4 – 21st December 2011 (BETA 2)Lesson 4 – 13th February – FULL SDK RELEASE	Learn how to update images based on where your hand is on the screen, similar to above but showing you how to modify the image source.
Lesson 5 – 28th December 2011 (BETA 2)Lesson 5 – 13th February – FULL SDK RELEASE	Learn how to adjust the Angle of your Kinect using this simple tutorial. Great for people who mount their Kinect on the wall. Not too much coding involved. Add a Button, Slider and Label.
Lesson 6 – 28th December 2011THIS LESSON APPLIES TO FULL SDK RELEASE AS WELL	Some of you have mentioned that you cannot get the designer to load because of the coding 4 fun tool kit. This video helps you fix that! It gets rid of all of the Hover Control errors.
Lesson 7 – 29th December 2011Lesson 7 – 13th February 2012 – FULL SDK RELEASE	Learn how to get the mouse cursor on your screen to perform functions and to follow your hand around by using the Kinect SDK. Sample files all include as well as finished working example.
Lesson 8 – 30th December 2011	Learn how to use both hands so that you can drag and drop an image. If your left hand is above your head, then the picture which is on the screen can follow your right hand about. If your left hand is not above your head, it drops it in position.
Lesson 9 – 31st December 2011LESSON 9 – 8TH APRIL 2012 – FULL SDK RELEASE FOR SPEECH RECOGNITION	Learn how to use Speech Recognition with this sample file. Learn how to change the speech to detect different words! You will need to install some samples on your computer to run this. All the MSI files are in my shared Sky Drive folder.
Lesson 10 – 15th January 2011	Learn how to program the depth camera and learn how to change the colours based on how close you get towards the camera. You can also change the colour of the active player.
Lesson 11 – 15th January 2011	Learn how to program the skeleton tracking so that it uses the 3rd dimension (Z Value). If you put your hand closer to the Kinect then it will tell you that you have. You can do a lot more with this, however this is a start.

Please feel free to contact me at chambers_r@ucc.rutland.sch.uk or alternatively you can contact me on lanky_boi_ray by using my twitter account.