Kinect with New MAC MINI 2012 (HI-SPEED USB PORT?)
hello.
sorry if my question appears not related to Maxmsp, but I am using Max with multiple Kinect sensors on Mac. Please excuse me if this post is unrelated to this forum.
Is there anyone have tried Kinect sensor with new 2012 Mac Mini?
I am considering to purchase a new mac mini for connecting two Kinect sensors. Since Kinect sensor requires Hi-Speed USB Bus, I cannot know if two Kinects would use two Hi-Speed USB buses on Mac Mini. I see new 2012 mac mini has USB 3, which is faster and better than USB 2.0. But I believe Kinect will run in USB 2.0 Hi-Speed anyway. Am I correct?
Can anyone confirm to me if new Mac Mini with USB 3 would connect two Kinect sensors (Hi-Speed USB Bus in USB 2.0)
comments welcome!
J
Don't know about the MacMini but here are some other considerations. Do you know you can't have 2 kinects do skeleton tracking at the same time on 1 computer? You can have 2 generate depth and RGB streams though.
Last time I checked - and this is a long time ago - kinects wouldn't work on USB3.0 ports. They're supposed to work in USB2.0 mode on USB3.0 ports but it didn't work. You might wanna check this to prevent bad surprises.
Just checked on my hackintosh. Kinect doesn't show up on a USB3.0 port. Could be due to my hacked OSX install but it's a bad sign.
thanks for your reply.
I am not using the skeleton tracking, I just need to use Kinect's depth sensing input in my patch. I see two Kinect sensors work well with two Hi-speed Buses on my Mac Pro.
Kinect won't work with USB 3.0? That is a huge bummer.. I am using jit.freenect to connect Kinect sensors. I hope there's a way to use Kinect in USB 3.0 if there's a patch to tweak jit,freenect.. I have been known USB 3.0 supports USB 2.0 as well on Mac Mini.
from Apple,
Mac mini (Late 2012) has a total of four USB 3.0 compliant ports. You can connect USB 3.0, USB 2.0, and USB 1.1 compliant devices to these ports.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5172#8
from Apple's description, I am not sure if each USB 3.0 bus would work as Hi-Speed USB 2.0 too.
is there any known patch to use Kinect with USB 3.0? or is it a hardware issue?
It seems like Openni found a solution,
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/openni-dev/72gBL5e42mc
But I'm using jit.freenect on Mac. I hope there's a solution as well.
Ah yes, my old thread there :)
That fix is for Linux and way too advanced for me anyhow...
It's a low-level USB driver issue or so, not OpenNI or freenect.
Just checked freenect on my machine. Doesn't work. The real problem is the kinect doesn't show up in OSX System Information. Then openni and freenect can't find it either.
After running into port limitations etc of laptops once too many I moved to a self-built desktop computer. When I need extra busses or whatever I just plug in another PCI card...
aha
well I need to prove this if Mac Mini 2012 USB 3.0 would run Kinect in USB 2.0 with a USB 2.0 hub or without it, as Apple described the compliance with USB 2.0.