Getting started with the Kinect for Windows SDK quickly with the Kinect Quickstarts

The Kinect for Windows SDK Quickstarts are short, 6 to 17 minute, video and text based tutorials to help you get into Kinect coding quickly (funny that). Each one is focused on a specific area, from initially getting the SDK and setting up your development environment to digging in and writing feature specific code. If you like your quickstart in an offline mode, or just want the slide decks and source, please download the Kinect for Windows SDK Quickstarts samples and slides.

Installing and Using the Kinect Sensor

This video covers the basics of installing and using the Kinect sensor.

• [02:34] Overview of Kinect Sensor
• [05:06] Device Manager
• [05:36] Using Kinect as an Audio Device
• [07:11] Using Kinect for Speech Recognition

Setting up your Development Environment

This video covers how to set up your development environment.

• [00:35] Sample Requirements
• [01:50] Starting the Demo
• [02:13] Adding References
• [02:45] Coding4Fun Kinect Library
• [03:23] Initializing the Kinect Runtime
• [05:41] Uninitializing the Kinect Runtime

Camera Fundamentals

This video covers the basics of reading camera data from the Kinect sensor.

• [00:25] Camera data information
• [03:30] Creating the UI
• [04:48] Initializing the Kinect runtime
• [07:18] Reading values from the RGB camera
• [11:26] Reading values from the Depth camera
• [13:06] Adjusting camera tilt

Working with Depth Data

This video covers the basics of using depth data from Kinect.

• [00:43] Depth data overview
• [04:56] Initializing the Kinect Runtime
• [05:46] Using the depth data to create an image
• [12:13] Using the PlayerIndex

Skeletal Tracking Fundamentals

This video covers the basics of skeletal tracking using the Kinect sensor.

• [00:31] Skeleton Tracking API
• [01:24] Understanding Skeleton Quality and Joint data
• [03:27] Setup skeleton tracking
• [03:44] Adding a basic hand tracked cursor
• [09:12] Using TransformSmoothing to remove “skeletal jitter”

Audio Fundamentals

This video covers the basics of reading audio data from the Kinect microphone array, a demo adapted from the built in audio recorder. The video also covers speech recognition using Kinect. For the built in example this was based on and the speech demo in C#, check out your "My Documents\Microsoft Research KinectSDK Samples\Audio" directory. You can download the the Visaul Basic examples here.

• [00:35] Kinect microphone information
• [01:10] Audio data
• [02:15] Speech recognition information
• [05:08] Recording audio
• [08:17] Speech recognition demo

Here’s a few more links you might find interesting:

• Kinect for Windows SDK Download
• Kinect for Windows SDK Quickstarts samples and slides.
• Programming Guide: Getting Started with the Kinect for Windows SDK Beta
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Coding4Fun Kinect Toolkit