Isadora Kinect
Rodney Liuzzo
I have a problem running a model 1414 kinect on Delicode NI mate 2.14 Free. I followed Monty Martin's tutorial on Isadora's you tube channel, to the letter and everything fits together, but the kinect doesn't really turn on.
I can only guess that you are on PC. If you are on Mac OSX Mojave the Kinect 1414 for NI mate has been broken for a long time. The NI mate forum has a relatively recent post from Jesse who is the NI mate developer indicating that they are no longer actively developing NI mate. This seams to suggest anything broken is going to stay broken in NI mate. Personally, I have stopped using it because it has become more and more unusable.
To get the effect of 3D geometry following the movement of Kinect Skeleton tracking data in Isadora you first need to get the data into Isadora. At this point the discussion of the Open Ni plugin is embargoed to a beta testing program forum thread. You can request to join that program and access further discussion on the thread there.
I have been running the paid version of NI-mate 2.14 everyday on a Mac and PC with no problems. If you recently updated Windows 10, you may need to reload the drivers. Here is some help I received form Delicode a few months ago:
"It's possible the XBox 360 Kinects are using the wrong driver. This can happen if Windows decides to utilize the system driver as opposed to the one NI mate installs. To change this, do the following:"
With NI mate, using it successfully will depend on what specific hardware pairing you are attempting to use. There is a known issue trying to use a Kinect for Xbox 360 (1414) with NI mate 2.14 on OSX Mojave or Kinect for Xbox (1473) with any Mac OS. I started a thread on the NI mate forum indicating the issue with OSX Mojave about 12 months ago. The most recent response from the NI mate developer Jesse (Sept 2019) on that thread suggests that there is no fix for this particular configuration coming any time soon ...
Is this working with a standard Isadora example, or your own code? If it is a standard example, what is it? If it is yours, can you share an MCVE? Was the code once working, and it stopped, or did it never work? Have you ever gotten Isadora working on the machine you are using -- or at all?
HI @Jeremydouglass and @GoToLoop. Thank you for this. This is very interesting. Yes the Isadora tutorial patch which was designed for Kinect specifies to use it with Processing 2, however I have been working on Processing 3 using this pre-done patch and it has worked. This is first time it has not. @GoToLoop the thred for the previous discussion is useful. Is this only way to go back to Processing 2? The patch for Isadore you can view here: -isadora-kinect-tracking-tutorial-part-2That is what I am using on MAC which provides the processing patch. Thank you.
With this video the libraries are available to download. However we are having problems with the Processing Patch it shows an error. I have tried to contact the creator but no answer yet. Anyone has expreienced this before? could anyone help to look at the processing patch and let me know what I need to do? We are looking at the processing sculpture patch.
HI Jeremydouglass, well the first problem is really we are unsure where to put what in order to set it up. We have download all the libraries and put everything in one folder. Then I opened Processing and the kinectSketches-master from the library, opened the src folder, open the jagracar folder, open the kinect, open sculpture and put the Sculpture.java into the processessing patch. Press run and it comes with an error: The package Toxi does not exist. ....so everytime we open it other errors comes in...therefore it needs setting up but we cannot find anywhere videos or instructions step by step what to do. Can anyone help? sorry new to Processing. Thank you.
Thank you Koogs, that's helpful. We have done the initial set up right from what you have posted. We have now set up Processing 3. with processing folder. However we are having problem with the additional libraries, where do they go.
Thank you Koogs, Yes I did set this one up before and it worked all well. Its the Processing sketch from the github which is problematic. As we are unsure where the toxi library should be placed in the document/processing/libraries or somewhere else? When the errors come up it highlites the toxi.geom.Slide3D which I found but not sure if I should copy and paste the whole toxi library into documents/processing/librariers or somewhere else.
Hi I do need urgently someone to guide me through the installation of libfreenect asap, if anyone free to do it over Skype, I am happy to cover some fees for your time. It is important project so I need to get this done before this Saturday. Any help would be really appreciated.
There's a new Question for the syphone bit of this, but, of course, it's really vague, expects is to know what syphone is, and doesn't link back here for context. And this Q is left open so nobody knows not to post in it...
I'll outline the steps I have used successfully to use a Kinect camera in Isadora, using the Kineme plugin running in Quartz Composer to force the camera to talk to your Mac, and then the Quartz Composer patch as a plugin inside Isadora. It also reads the accelerometer data of the Kinect. This method outlined below will not allow you to access a person's 'skeleton' data but will get you both the Kinect video streams: ie the RGB camera and the stereoscopic infra red depth mapped image into Isadora. If you want to use skeleton data, you should look at using OSCeleton instead. There is some info inthe Isadora forum on this already.
1) You need Quartz Composer software which is part of the downloadable XCode package from Apple. You can register for free as an Apple Developer to get the last-but-one version of XCode. If you want the most recent version you may have to pay a small fee instead. NB. XCode is a large .dmg that takes a while to download so allow some time for this first step.
2) Download the Kineme Kinect Tools plugin for Quartz Composer (now also Lion compatible). The Kineme KinectTools plugin retrieves color and depth image data from the Xbox Kinect. Based on libfreenect.
5) Delete all the blue objects and replace with sprites from the Quartz Composer object library. They drag and drop into the patch. Click on the 'Color Image' and 'Depth Image' outputs to grab a 'string' and connect them to the image inputs on the Sprite objects, so it will now look like this...
7) Control-Click (Mac) on the Kineme object outputs (the white dots beside each parameter) in order to publish the outputs, as seen in the screen capture below. Select the parameter to publish from the publish output list that appears and a check mark will be added next to that parameter in the list. Once you have done that successfully the dot changes from white to green. Repeat this process for all the outputs that you wish to publish.
8) Save the file and quit Quartz Composer. NB You MUST quit Quartz before you boot up Isadora or Quartz will be hogging the Kinect video streams and you won't be able to receive them into Isadora.
9) Copy the new saved Quartz Composer file to the location where Isadora looks for Quartz Composer compositions when it boots up. Then it will become available to use as a 'QC kinect' actor in Isadora and you can add it to your Isadora patch. NB You need to have the optional Core Video upgrade version of Isadora for this to work.
10) Boot up Isadora and create a Broadcaster patch that looks like the image below. You are going to use this patch to receive the Kinect camera images and broadcast them into a second Isadora patch,which I am calling a Listener patch. The reason you have to do this is that Isadora crashes when you jump scenes with the Kinect connected. However if you broadcast from one izzy patch that never jumps scenes, into a second patch where you can jump scenes, then it is reliable. Here are screen captures of the two patches. So you can now go ahead and add as many scenes as you need to in the Listener patch and jump scenes without any problems.
Alternatively you can have the QC Kinect actor in a scene in the same patch, and ensure that that scene is always active, rather than in a separate project patch. You would then still use the broadcast and listener actors to broadcast from the active kinect scene into other scenes. However if you accidentally deactivate the main kinect scene, the camera signal will crash, and you may also trigger an Isadora crash.
Open the Isadora Listener file. It has a control panel, so you may need to hide the control panel (shift-cmd-c to toggle the control panel on and off, shift-cmd-s to split to seeing both the control panel and the editing window at the same time)
ps.. i renamed my quartz file which is why it shows up in these screen captures with a different name. Your file from kineme will originally just be called kinect.qtz. Once it has been loaded by Isadora as a plugin it will be found in the Isadora tool box, labelled automatically as QC kinect (without the suffix) If you decide to rename your qtz file, as I have, then it will show up with that new name and the prefix QC in your Isadora tool box.
This Drive-By workshop is an introduction to video tracking using Isadora software. Learn how to track a moving object with a web camera, kinect, or external video camera, and use the data that is collected to control different aspects of video or sound. Participants will learn to troubleshoot the pitfalls of video tracking, and are introduced to the concepts behind improved methods using the Kinect stereoscopic infra-red camera that allows for depth mapping and human skeleton tracking, along with knowledge of how to use OSC mapping to send tracking data into other softwares.
Participants receive temporary full software licences. Please bring your own laptops. Mac and PC users welcome. Basic familiarity with Isadora software is required. Participants will need to prepare some video and audio clips to bring to the workshop. It is recommended (though not essential) to bring a camera other than the built in camera on your laptop. Kinect cameras not required, but also recommended if you have a strong interest in the field.
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