The Kinect, Windows Azure Service Bus and SignalR together in Kinectonitor

The second post in our Brady Gaster double-shot and the last in our Kinecting to Hardware week (though that's a stretch in this case), is one where the Kinect is used in a non-traditional way, but one that in hindsight seems pretty logical...

The Kinectonitor

Suppose you had a some scary-looking hoodlum walking around your house when you were out? You’d want to know about it, wouldn’t you? Take one Kinect, mix in a little Windows Azure Service Bus, sprinkle in some SignalR, and mix it all together with some elbow grease, and you could watch in near-real-time as sinewy folks romp through your living room. Here’s how.

You might not be there (or want to be there) when some maniac breaks in, but it’d be great to have a series of photographs with the dude’s face to aid the authorities in their search for your home stereo equipment. The video below is a demonstration of the code this post will dive into in more detail. I figured it’d give some context to the problem this article will be trying to solve.

I’d really like to have a web page where I could go to see what’s going on in my living room when I’m not there. I know that fancy Kinect I picked up my kids for their XBox can do that sort of thing and I know how to code some .NET. Is it possible to make something at home that’d give me this sort of thing?

Good news! It isn’t that difficult. To start with, take a look at the Kinectonitor Visual Studio solution below

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Summary

This article took a few of the more recent techniques and tools to be released to .NET developers. With a little creativity and some time, it’s not difficult to use those components to make something pretty neat at home in the physical computing world. Pairing these disciplines up to create something new (or something old someway different) is great fodder for larger projects using the same technologies later.

Project Information URL: http://bradygaster.com/the-kinectonitor

Project Download URL: https://github.com/bradygaster/Kinectonitor

Project Source URL: https://github.com/bradygaster/Kinectonitor

Contact Information:

• Blog: http://bradygaster.com/
• Twitter: @bradygaster

Update:
Make sure you keep an eye on Brady's blog as he's continuing to update and improve this project...