Kinect + Android

Tue 4/26/11

After many researches, we found a guide from Japan (conveniently in English) that allowed us to work with Kinect on our Beagleboard running Android.

This guide used these open-source software:

OpenFrameworks
ofxKinect(Kinect for OpenFrameworks)
ofxAndroid(Android for OpenFrameworks)

Steps 3 and 4 in the guide were the necessary steps to achieve our goal.

Step 3. Change Android's configuration

              we added the following line

mount usbfs none /proc/bus/usb -o devmode=0666

              into the init.rc file (after all file permissions and before services)

Step 4. Upgrade Android's kernel

              libusb MUST neet "USB FS". And Kinect MUST neet "High Speed
              USB(USB2.0)".

              Check the kernel option in .config

CONFIG_USB_DEVICEFS=y

              Copy new kernel onto sd card

Upgrading the kernel involved recompiling the it and took quite a while for us to finish (upwards of 20-30 minutes).

Now that Kinect can be recognized through the USB on Beagleboard, we downloaded the Full "OpenFrameworks x kinect x Android" Development Environment for beagleboard provided by the guide as well. The extracted files included an openFrameworks sample that we compiled into an .apk file. Using the same procedures to install Beats on Android+Beagleboard in the previous post, the openFrameworks sample installed and ran smoothly.

At first glance, the sample looks promising with fairly good and stable frame rates. However, the new OpenFrameworks with ofxKinect addon would require us to learn how to code with the new library and reprogram the functionalities we achieved with Kinect+Ubuntu.