A few things I’ve worked on or written have gone up in the past couple of months, so here’s a quick list of what they are and where you can get them:

Kinect Service v1.6

The Coding4Fun Kinect Service allows you to stream Kinect color, depth, skeleton, and audio from one PC to another PC or a Windows Phone via sockets. This new release now includes Windows Runtime Components written in C++ which target x86, x64 and ARM. Now you can stream Kinect data to a Windows Store app!

• CodePlex Project

Maelstrom

For //build/ 2012, us Coding4Fun folks wanted to showcase what Windows 8 can offer developers. There are a lot of projects showing off great things like contracts and Live Tiles, but we wanted to show off some of the lesser known features. This project focuses on one of those: stereoscopic 3D with DirectX 11.1. Imagine ridiculously over-engineered 3D pong, and that’s Maelstrom!

• Project Page
• Overview Article
• CodePlex Project

MJPEG Decoder v1.2

The latest release of my MJPEG …

I'm off to TechEd North America later this week where we'll be showing off the Project Detroit car and our BoxingBots project previously demonstrated at SXSW in March. 

Dan Fernandez and I will also be giving a talk on Kinect goodness.  Here are the details:

Coding4Fun: Build Fun, Cool, Commercial Applications Using the Kinect for Windows SDK

Session Code: DEV330
Speaker(s): Brian Peek, Dan Fernandez
Tuesday, June 12 at 5:00 PM - 6:15 PM in S320A

Come to this must-see session to find out how you can use the Kinect for Windows SDK to build commercial applications! Learn how the RGB and depth cameras work, how to use and fine-tune skeletal tracking, how to read an audio stream from the Kinect microphone array and even how to send Kinect data over the network including to your Windows Phone

This same session will be given at TechEd Europe in two weeks, with Clint Rutkas playing the part of me.  I will not be at the Europe conference.

So, if you're attending …

I will be speaking at Visual Studio Live! in New York this May 14-17.  The conference is a full 4 day event and there’s still time to register!  The three sessions I’m presenting are:

W01 – Get Connected with Kinect 
Date: Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Time: 9:15 AM – 10:30 AM 
Level: Introductory

By now we’ve all probably tried Kinect, Microsoft’s revolutionary motion control device for the Xbox 360. But what about developing software to use the device? With the release of the official Kinect for Windows SDK from Microsoft, developers can now use this device like any other hardware peripheral from code. This session will introduce developers to the Kinect device itself, how it works, and will offer an overview of the API provided by Microsoft to retrieve image, depth, skeletal, audio, and audio position information from the device. The session will also cover some interesting uses for this information, and how it can be used in …

For my fellow Capital District folks, I’ll be giving a session to the Tech Valley .NET Users Group (TVUG) Tuesday, December 13th at 6:30pm on everything that is Kinect and the Kinect for Windows SDK  Here are the details….

Where: Tyler Technologies, Latham, NY
When: Tuesday, December 13th, 2011, 6:30-8:30PM

Join us as Brian Peek demonstrates the basics of using the Kinect for Windows SDK including:  how Kinect works, installing and setting up the Kinect sensor, setting up the development environment, reading camera, depth and skeleton data, understanding what depth data is and how it works, skeletal tracking and working with the Kinect microphone array to record audio and use speech recognition.

Hope to see you all there!

I have seen a few people talk about using the Kinect for Windows SDK with XNA lately, and many of those projects aren't using the SDK how it's intended to be used from a framework such as this.

When I had a hand in working on the managed SDK, I made a point that the API should allow for both an "eventing" model, and a polling model.  In the land of WPF and WinForms, an eventing model makes perfect sense.  In these frameworks, the SDK is intended to be used thusly:

private Nui.Runtime _kinect = Nui.Runtime.Kinects[0];

private void Window_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
    _kinect.DepthFrameReady += DepthFrameReady;
    _kinect.SkeletonFrameReady += SkeletonFrameReady;
}

void DepthFrameReady(object sender, ImageFrameReadyEventArgs e)
{
    // do something with the depth frame
}

void SkeletonFrameReady(object sender, SkeletonFrameReadyEventArgs e)
{
    // do something with the skeleton frame
}

But, in the land of XNA, where all of your code is shared …

Hooray!  I can finally talk about this!  As I've alluded to previously, I had a hand (one of many) in the managed portion of the SDK and what was originally shown at MIX. Since then the SDK has changed a bit but it's finally ready to go!

The Kinect for Windows SDK is now available for download on the Microsoft Research site.  We have also launched several samples over at Coding4Fun that you can begin using immediately:

Coding4Fun Kinect Toolkit

You definitely want to download this one when you get started.  This toolkit contains a variety of extension methods and controls to make using the Kinect for Windows SDK even easier to use.  Some of my code appears in this one. 

Kinect Mouse Cursor

This sample is entirely mine.  Kinect Mouse Cursor is a demo application that uses the Kinect for Windows SDK and its skeletal tracking features to allow a user to use their hands to control the Windows mouse cursor.  Use your right hand to move the …