Jnect for Eclipse - The Java to Kinect for Windows SDK bridge

We've seen VB.net Kinect for Windows SKD code examples/projects. C++ examples/projects. And, of course, C# examples/projects.

What about Java (Yes, Java)? What if you're a Java dev and live in Eclipse? Today's post is just for you...

Microsoft Kinect for Java and Eclipse in Jnect

An area where we find a high degree of innovation is in the way we communicate with computers and other electronic devices. Touch displays are almost a must-have for mobiles and speech control could be the next big thing in this area. Looking at the games market, every major player has a device allowing users to control games and even media features, using gestures instead of gamepads.

Microsoft Kinect is an example of such a device. Its cameras enable the tracking of a moving human body and provide this information to the Xbox 360 to interact with the game. For example, if the player jumps in the real world, its avatar in the game will also perform a jump. The precise tracking of Kinect also enables the control of more serious features, for example the selection of a movie to be watched. Additionally, Kinect is able to understand spoken commands using speech recognition.

Obviously, this technology could be used for more than controlling the Xbox. Microsoft has published an SDK for Windows, providing programmatic access to the data provided by the Kinect device. This opens the potential use cases for Kinect to almost any kind of application.

However, the SDK requires the programmer to write the application in C++/C# to access the SDK, and to date, there has been no support for Java. Jnect bridges this gap and creates interoperability between the Microsoft SDK and the Java world. The project provides an Eclipse plugin which uses JNI to connect with the Microsoft Kinect SDK. The plugin provides a Java API to use selected features offered by the original Microsoft SDK (see below).

Project Information URL: http://jaxenter.com/microsoft-kinect-for-java-and-eclipse-in-jnect-42150.html

jnect

This project provides an Eclipse Plug-In interoperating with the Microsoft Kinect SDK. This way you can create applications using the body tracking and speech abilities of the Kinect using Java and Eclipse RCP. As we provide a JNI wrapper for the original SDK, it needs to be installed, which currently requires Windows 7

Latest Release

The latest version of Jnect is 0.2.0. You can download it from here.

Release Notes

Prerequisites:

• .Net Framework 4.0
• Microsoft Kinect SDK v1.5

New Features:

• Support for Kinect for Windows SDK version 1.5
• IBodyProvider-Extension Point added. KinectManager can retrieve Body-Objects from implementing plugins.
• New EMFStore-Recording/Replaying demo using the BodyProvider-Extension Point. The movement will be recorded and can be replayed using EMFStore.
• New Speech Control Demo. Eclipse can be controlled by speech saying the Eclipse-Commands out loud.
• New GEF-Diagram Editing Demo. Shows the possibility to edit GEF-diagrams (here an edited example from the GEF-SDK) using the Kinect bodytracking.

Project Information URL: https://code.google.com/a/eclipselabs.org/p/jnect/

Project Download URL: https://code.google.com/a/eclipselabs.org/p/jnect/wiki/Download?tm=2

Project Source URL: https://code.google.com/a/eclipselabs.org/p/jnect/source/checkout