Comment Feed for Channel 9 - Kinect'ing to Arduino with Visual Basic http://files.channel9.msdn.com/thumbnail/c75486f9-d0f2-4541-ae69-b68b57f25426.png Channel 9 - Kinect'ing to Arduino with Visual Basic Today's Hardware Friday post is another Kinect related project, but this time using a couple things we don't see much in the Kinect space, Ardunio and Visual Basic! Kinect controls Arduino wired Servos using Visual Basic 2010 In this project, I use left and right hand movements in Kinect to control the rotation of two servos tied to Arduino Uno, which in turn moves the left and right arms of a makeshift stickman. The middleware is written in Visual Basic 2010 and is based on the Microsoft Kinect SDK beta 2. There are plenty of C++ and C# code examples to interface Kinect to other gadgets, but not many Visual Basic examples. So I figured this project could help folks with mostly VB skills to start hacking Kinect with Arduino. HOW THIS STUFF WORKSKinect keeps track of 20 skeleton joints for each player. To simplify this project, I extract the coordinates of the left hand and right hand joints only. Then I pass those joint coordinates to an Arduino UNO after I do some scaling in Visual Basic from computer screen size to servo angles. I modified the VB code in the Microsoft Quickstart samples because it's well documented and comes with good tutorials. So anyone can review these tutorials to learn more about how this VB code works with Kinect. The changes I made to the sample VB code were mostly to facilitate serial communications with Arduino as well as to map screen coordinates to the servos angles. In this project, I capture the Y (vertical) movement of the HandLeft and HandRight joints. It should be easy to modify my code to add more servos and joints. WIRINGFor this project, I used two TG9e micro servos powered by the Arduino Uno connected to my PC via USB. For bigger servos with more power needs, you may have to power them separately or else the Arduino will act erratically. I labeled one servo as the Left Hand servo while the other as the Right Hand servo. If you confuse the servos at some point, the fix is often as simple as changing a line of code instead of rewiring. Left Servo ---> Arduino Digital Pin 9Right Servo ---> Arduino Digital Pin 11 For debugging purposes, you may wish to consider testing your build with one servo before adding another. HOW TO APPLY MY CODEIn addition to the instructions, you can view my step-by-step screen captured stills. Please click the "i" in the upper left corner of each photo to see the full resolution still. ... HARDWARE PARTS- Microsoft Kinect- Arduino Uno- Micro Servos X 2 (I used TG9e micro servos)- Breadboards and wiresSOFTWARE COMPONENTSArduino IDE 1.0http://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/softwareMicrosoft Kinect SDK V1 beta2http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/kinectforwindows/download/Coding4Fun Kinect Toolkit 1.1http://c4fkinect.codeplex.com/releases/view/76271#DownloadId=300233Microsoft Visual Basic Express 2010http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/products/2010-editions/visual-basic-express.NET Framework 4http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/aa569263Microsoft DirectX SDK - June 2010 or later versionhttp://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=6812Runtime for Microsoft DirectX 9http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=35Microsoft Kinect Code4Fun Quickstart VB code (You will overwrite this with my modified version)http://files.ch9.ms/coding4fun/KinectForWindowsSDKQuickstarts.zip If you're an Arduino builder, a Kinect hardware hacker or Visual Basic dev, there's a little here for all of you... en Sat, 25 May 2013 05:46:30 GMT Sat, 25 May 2013 05:46:30 GMT Rev9 Re: Kinect'ing to Arduino with Visual Basic This is such a time saver. I was stuck for days trying to get Arduino to work with Kinect. Thank you for sharing this. And a big thank you for the developer Hazim Bitar for taking the time to document his work in such meticulous details.

posted by Kinector

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/coding4fun/blog/Kinecting-to-Arduino-with-Visual-Basic#c634622218091046850 Sun, 15 Jan 2012 10:56:49 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/coding4fun/blog/Kinecting-to-Arduino-with-Visual-Basic#c634622218091046850 Kinector Re: Kinect'ing to Arduino with Visual Basic Nice tutorial.

posted by Tyma

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/coding4fun/blog/Kinecting-to-Arduino-with-Visual-Basic#c634623252431653478 Mon, 16 Jan 2012 15:40:43 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/coding4fun/blog/Kinecting-to-Arduino-with-Visual-Basic#c634623252431653478 Tyma Re: Kinect'ing to Arduino with Visual Basic IT WORKS!

posted by Adam84

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/coding4fun/blog/Kinecting-to-Arduino-with-Visual-Basic#c634626076304576017 Thu, 19 Jan 2012 22:07:10 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/coding4fun/blog/Kinecting-to-Arduino-with-Visual-Basic#c634626076304576017 Adam84 Re: Kinect'ing to Arduino with Visual Basic posted by Janet West

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/coding4fun/blog/Kinecting-to-Arduino-with-Visual-Basic#c634628681731539237 Sun, 22 Jan 2012 22:29:33 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/coding4fun/blog/Kinecting-to-Arduino-with-Visual-Basic#c634628681731539237 Janet West Re: Kinect'ing to Arduino with Visual Basic posted by Janet West

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/coding4fun/blog/Kinecting-to-Arduino-with-Visual-Basic#c634628681743569563 Sun, 22 Jan 2012 22:29:34 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/coding4fun/blog/Kinecting-to-Arduino-with-Visual-Basic#c634628681743569563 Janet West Re: Kinect'ing to Arduino with Visual Basic posted by Jad

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/coding4fun/blog/Kinecting-to-Arduino-with-Visual-Basic#c634630177046715332 Tue, 24 Jan 2012 16:01:44 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/coding4fun/blog/Kinecting-to-Arduino-with-Visual-Basic#c634630177046715332 Jad Re: Kinect'ing to Arduino with Visual Basic posted by Mir

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/coding4fun/blog/Kinecting-to-Arduino-with-Visual-Basic#c634698769857094258 Fri, 13 Apr 2012 01:23:05 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/coding4fun/blog/Kinecting-to-Arduino-with-Visual-Basic#c634698769857094258 Mir Re: Kinect'ing to Arduino with Visual Basic @Mir: You're referring to the "Microsoft Kinect Code4Fun Quickstart VB code (You will overwrite this with my modified version)" link, right?

That's a know server side issue that the Channel 9/Microsoft team is working on and will hopefully resolve soon.

 

posted by gduncan411

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/coding4fun/blog/Kinecting-to-Arduino-with-Visual-Basic#c634699258576721797 Fri, 13 Apr 2012 14:57:37 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/coding4fun/blog/Kinecting-to-Arduino-with-Visual-Basic#c634699258576721797 gduncan411