Kinect and Max 6 and MAC OS

hi toddak,
did you also look at Synapse?
http://synapsekinect.tumblr.com/post/6307752257/maxmsp-jitter

rob

jit.freenect.grab is buggy. has a memory leak (only shows after some hours of non-stop operation) and it loses connection under high cpu loads. it's also from pre-OpenNI times, ie. hacked and reverse engineered. of course it might still be useful to you, for example if you need the depth map directly in max.

i'm working on a mac version of jit.openni: https://cycling74.com/forums/here-is-my-working-jit-openni-max-jitter-openni-external-for-windows
i hope to add skeleton tracking to it. no promises on when i'll have anything working though.

i went through most -if not all- the options for working with the kinect and Max on mac (without coding and compiling in Xcode). for now i settled with SimpleOpenNI for Processing: http://code.google.com/p/simple-openni/
i use that library in a Processing app that does the skeleton tracking and sends the data as OSC to Max (it's really just slightly adapted sample code). working this way has the advantage of it being open as opposed to synapse, OSCeleton, etc which you'd have to recompile yourself if you want changes for your specific needs (which i do).

plus on the same page is an easy installer that puts all kinect libraries and drivers into place for you. really handy way of getting around the confusing mess which is the OpenNI/NITE/sensorkinect world.

as the tohm in that tohmjudson.com post :), I can say this...

move to Synapse... much simpler to take with you everywhere, an I really enjoy the built in info such as "most front hand"

You would need 10.6 for the OpenNI install on my site if I remember correctly, but I did the whole thing in max 5, but it should be the same

there is also this http://zigfu.com/

Hi

I am very excited about the potential of interfacing kinect to MAX. I am also trying to run jit.freenect.grab on my macbook:

OSX 10.5.8
3.06GHz Intel
MAX 5

When opening the jit.freenect.grab.maxhelp like toddak I receive:

jit.freenect.grab: unable to load object bundle executable
2012-01-02 12:25:47.783 MaxMSP[1761:20b] Error loading /Applications/Max5/Cycling '74/jit.freenect.grab_rc4/jit.freenect.grab.mxo/Contents/MacOS/jit.freenect.grab: dlopen(/Applications/Max5/Cycling '74/jit.freenect.grab_rc4/jit.freenect.grab.mxo/Contents
/MacOS/jit.freenect.grab, 262): no suitable image found. Did find:
    /Applications/Max5/Cycling '74/jit.freenect.grab_rc4/jit.freenect.grab.mxo/Contents/MacOS/jit.freenect.grab: unknown required load command 0x80000022

I am able to open the run the jit.freenect.grab.maxhelp patch and receive data from the kinect on a borrowed machine running OSX 10.6.8 but I would like to use my own computer. According to the information on http://jmpelletier.com/freenect/ It works on OSX 10.5 and higher and requires MAX 5. Is it possible to run jit.freenect.grab on an OSX 10.5? If so is there something I am missing?

thank you,

Wow, thanks all!

Ergaster: Downloading it now! Are you using synapse with jit.freenect.grab?

Tohm: Thanks for the heads up! And your wonderful how to guide from the previous post :) When you say 'much simpler to take everywhere with you' are you implying that its easy to install on, let's say, another computer for installation artworks with a version of runtime on it too?

Dtr and everyone:

So, just to clarify a little of this process in newb terminology. Kinect obviously needs some form of 'driver' to interact with max yeah? And is this what all the Terminal programming is to do?
And, if I am to assume correctly, depending on what actions specifically you are trying to get out of the kinect, that changes how you program your 'driver' through Terminal?

I'm not at that stage yet, but fear it may be in the pipe line.

Also, any idea's with my jit.freenect.grab error message?

Many many thanks again! This has been very enlightening :D

You need:
- a driver to connect to the kinect
- an application that uses the driver/kinect
- the openni and NITE libraries (in most cases)

jit.freenect.grab uses an older hacked driver. i think all the others use avin2's driver, which i guess really just is a slight modification of the official primesense sensor driver. primesense can't officially support the kinect because of agreements with microsoft but the kinect just is a repackaged primesense camera. see http://www.primesense.com/ & http://www.openni.org/

the driver by itself doesn't do anything without an application accessing it. the jit.freenect.grab external for max is such a program, as are osceleton, synapse and processing apps using the simpleopenni library.

most apps need the openni and NITE libraries to function. jit.freenect.grab doesn't as it was developed before primesense released them.

Yes, easy to transport...

I have used it several times, on different cpu's using Runtime... all running from my jumpdrive...makes my life easier. Also makes others lives easier since I can just give hem Synapse and they can run my stuff in Runtime, for example, I am working with a dancer in Berlin that I can just email the max stuff and not have to worry about her doing a full install or owning max...

but that just how I work... I have heard some other great things about using the full install like on my site.

Like much of max, it really depends on what your end goal/product is... my goal was to work with one dancer, but on many different computers and across the sea, so Synapse was my answer...

dtr: Aha, so things like synapse converts these things into midi values then that max can understand? As opposed to making an object to do all the decoding as in jit.freenect.grab?

And I'm guessing I need to install those libraries then...

Tohm: That makes alot of sense. I'm making art works that I'm hoping to exhibit overseas more and more, so the idea that I can set things up with less trouble shooting is very appealing (and also for 'plan b's' when performing live!). I'll be using quite basic features of kinect to begin with, but who knows... I'll see how creative my mind gets, then force my programming to catch up with my artistic intent :)

To all:

Synapse looks like a win. I've just ordered the snow leopard update, will touch back again once its installed and tell you all how its going! :)

no you dont need to install libs to use synapse or jit.freenect