The 9 Best Kinect Hacks To Date (VIDEO)

Microsoft's Kinect, which sold twice as fast as the iPod when it launched, lets users play games without a controller, and just by moving their hands, arms, legs, and torsos.

But it's proven to be much more than a gaming system. Users have developed a slew of creative uses for the device and videos of these jaw-dropping Kinect hacks have proliferated online.

We've collected some of the best Kinect hacks in the slideshow below. They're fun, surprising, and some even offer potential solutions to real-world problems.

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Comments

[JFetch]

06:45 PM on 05/31/2011

The World of Warcraft one should be here.

[Max Shaw]

06:15 PM on 05/31/2011

I would never trust a connect surgery...thats ridiculous. Dude sneezes, tries to have to cover his nose and now youre dead.

[RAmen69]

05:26 PM on 05/31/2011

And in other news, you really CAN go outside and play games in real life.

[LotusGeek]

05:23 PM on 05/31/2011

The most exciting one, to me, was the NAVI proof-of-concept for the blind. The best way to bring cutting-edge, and even life-changing, innovations to the masses is to:
a) allow people to use existing, off-the-shelf technologies; this allows for much less expensive development costs
b) provide public, extensible "toolkits" that can be used with the aforementioned off-the-shelf technologies, and make them available (for free) to the geek masses - and let their imaginations be their guide

When you provide toolkits to the public it allows them to extend the off-the-shelf technologies in new and exciting ways. Furthermore, the less "defined" the toolkit is (and technologies, for that matter), the greater the opportunity for innovation. As long as the toolkit is extensible (meaning that people can extend and enhance the toolkit), the people who are excited by it will create what they need - as evidence by these (and other) videos.

[Brandon Baier]

03:56 PM on 05/31/2011

I cant wait for this tech to go further, anyone ever seen Johnny Pnuemonic???

Its really interesting how the tech from so many different movies and the like have become real, its rather encoraging for the future actually, though it could be scary at the same time.

[jhank]

02:09 PM on 05/31/2011

Wow. My favorite color is clear!

[Justin KH]

02:01 PM on 05/31/2011

Great stuff! Glad that you guys finally featured Kinect Hacks!

The community has been growing tremendously and with the soon release of the SDK, I'm sure we'll begin to see more and more hacks released in the coming months. Here is one hack that I think should be featured as well

http://www.kinecthacks.com/kinect-home-lighting-now-on-htlm5/

This is a home automation system that allows a user to quickly create 'zones' within your rooms with a quick drag and drop interface to automate what happens as you move about your rooms/house. While the video'd demo'd may seem a bit geeky, the technology is great. You can literally control anything you want simply by walking into a room.

Take for example that you need to leave in a hurry, now you don't need to go around turning off all of the lights, a/c, fans, etc. Simply walk out of the room and everything turns off. The second you walk back in, depending on your settings the lights, A/C, and fan turn back on.

This can be also be used for more advanced functions, such as hooking it up to your DVD player/movie player. Lets assume that you heard someone at the door, but you are at a crucial point in the movie. Now you don't even need to find the controller, simply get up and walk out of the room and the DVD/movie player will automatically pause your movie for you.

[tonyjim]

12:50 PM on 05/31/2011

I guess I should be more impressed. Its just that I was one of those kids who grew up watching 2001: A Space Odyssey and expected us to be flying to Jupiter by now with our mentally ill A.I. buddy watching our backs.

[jzak]

12:43 PM on 05/31/2011

Oliver, how would it work with a full length mirror on the left (blind side) of you?

Joseph in San Francisco

[Jack Reynard]

12:28 PM on 05/31/2011

Invisible Man - great music :)

[icstars]

12:00 PM on 05/31/2011

I saw this online--a planetarium company that's using Kinect to drive through the solar system hands-free

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1yxfeMKd6I

[Pucker]

11:36 AM on 05/31/2011

It's funny because the thing it is weakest at in these examples is the video game.

Even if the Kinect Hat made me laugh....you can see the practical use of the technology for someone visually impaired. They just need to shrink down the hardware.

The holographic vision is also impressive, for the amateur brain scientist. It serves as a good example for abilities we take for granted in our mind -- like the ability to instantly process 3D imagery primarily from the input of the two cameras in our skull (and some really amazing software inside). Look at the rudimentary output of the Kinect and compare it to what your eyes see (they actually 'fill in' the dark areas much better than the Kinect when the image is 'flipped in the mind').

And, again, while a lot of things this technology would apply to are obvious, the one that will require the most rework and creativity to make work is gaming......the primary purpose it's sold right now. Still, if that's what brings economies of scale to get this in the hands of inventors and puts it into homes, making it accessible, then that's fine.

[frank day]

12:20 PM on 05/31/2011

You're right. My two teenage gamers have no desire for it.

[TrotskyMemo]

11:26 AM on 05/31/2011

Wow, real optical camo! I'll certainly be more cautious when hoping on freight elevators with weight limits.

[AN2009]

04:15 AM on 05/31/2011

Some very interesting stuff. I enjoyed the 3D Shadow Puppets, KinectBot, and Augmented Reality 'Vision' For The Blind segments the most.

[John Boylan]

08:32 PM on 05/30/2011

I saw an article where someone replicated the 3D experiment with two cameras (to avoid the lost half problem you're seeing here). I'm really impressed with MSFT this time around for letting developers have a crack at this amazing platform.