AU
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Oh, what fun. Kinect's audio capabilities were an area that I hadn't spent any time on, but an email conversation with a developer (thanks, Glenn! 😉 spurred me to take a closer look. The Beta 2 version of the Microsoft Kinect SDK, there's a new sample showing how to process audio and add speech recognition via the Microsoft Speech SDK. The Kinect SDK sample is pretty interesting: it displays a graphical indicator of where the sound is located, relative to the device (its array of four microphones allows Kinect to quite accurately position where sound is coming from, presumably to…
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Yesterday evening, I had a nice chat by phone with a local development partner, here in Switzerland. I'm meeting with a member of his development team, next week, and we were establishing a way of us identifying one another at the train station. Rather than offering to wear a pink carnation, I suggested the visitor check the photo on my blog before coming. The developer – who had seen me in person, before – suggested it might be helpful if he mentioned to his colleague that I was "short and bald"… I'm apparently shorter than he'd initially expected – clearly…
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As promised, here's my handout for CP3840, the main class I'm teaching at this year's AU. Introducing Kinect Since Kinect for Xbox 360® was launched on November 4th, 2010, the device has taken the world by storm: it became the quickest selling consumer electronics device ever (according to the Guinness Book of World Records), selling 8 million units in the first 60 days. This record has since been surpassed, but still. Kinect was originally intended to be a controller for the Xbox 360 gaming system – allowing you to play games without a controller, or, as Microsoft like to say,…
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After an initial attempt at adjusting the view in AutoCAD based on input from Kinect, this post takes it further by implementing a more effective orbit/zoom capability. The proportions/rates of each are currently still hard-coded – and so will vary in effectiveness depending on the scale of the model being navigated – but it's certainly a step in the right direction (and much closer to being demoable than my previous attempt). All in all it works quite well: when I get the chance, I'll try to put together another screencast to show it in action. The good news is that…
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The looming AU material deadline has finally forced me to work out how to use Kinect gestures to navigate within an AutoCAD model. It's far from perfect, but the fundamentals are all there: we have a loop – outside of a jig, this time, as we don't need to display a point cloud or generate geometry in-place – that takes skeleton data provided by the Kinect and uses it to adjust the current view. Like most people, my head gets a bit twisted when dealing with DCS and WCS, cameras, targets, views, etc., but thankfully I stumbled across an old…
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Given the fact AU 2011 is quickly approaching, I decided it was time to dust off my Kinect-related code and getting it working with the Beta SDK from Microsoft Research. Part of the reason I haven't been able to do this sooner is that my primary work machine is currently a MacBook Pro running Windows 7 via Parallels, and the Microsoft Kinect driver currently does not support working inside a Virtual Machine. I did start to try to get my previous implementation using OpenNI + NITE to work on this system, but as it uses the nKinect component that is…
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To celebrate my second son's 5th birthday (how time flies!), we visited Disneyland Paris for the long weekend here in Switzerland (it was the Jeûne Fédéral, or Federal Fasting Holiday, which apparently has its roots back in the 15th century). We arrived back, late last night, by the TGV from Paris to Neuchâtel. Aside from being a lot of fun with the kids, it was also quite nostalgic, as my wife and I had last stayed – back in the days before children – at the particular hotel we chose (the Newport Bay Club), during Autodesk's Developer Days event back…
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The class catalog for Autodesk University 2011 is now available to preview in advance of the conference registration opening up on August 30th. Here are the sessions I'm either presenting or hosting: CP3840 Integrating Microsoft® Kinect™ with AutoCAD® Lecture Nov 30, 3:15pm CP4459-U AutoCAD® .NET Development: Tools and Best Practices Unconf-erence Dec 1, 1:15pm I'm also honoured to be co-presenting the following session with the famous (and famously lowercase) dave espinosa-aguilar: CP4717 Unlimited AutoCAD® Scripting for Everyone Lecture Nov 29, 5:00pm And I'm part of the panel for the following sessions: CP2149 AutoCAD® APIs: Meet the Experts Stephen Preston Panel…
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I'm a bit late announcing this, but as I'm due to submit my own proposals for Autodesk University 2011 by the May 6th deadline, I thought I'd post a quick note to remind readers of the fast-closing window of opportunity to submit your own proposals to speak at this year's AU. I'm definitely submitting a session showing how to integrate AutoCAD with Kinect (please don't go stealing my idea, now ;-), and I'm chewing on another topic, which may prove to be "choosing the right programming language for working with AutoCAD". I'm still open to delivering additional sessions, in case…
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One AU evening at the bar, I was chatting to a couple of developers who suggested covering some fundamental mathematics on this blog: their respective career paths had not involved any formal (or perhaps recent) studies of certain important areas of mathematics, especially related to core linear algebra concepts such as matrix multiplication. Part of me said, "what a great idea", another part said "I wonder what resources are already out there" and the last said "oh man, I don't remember how all that stuff actually works". 🙂 Before I start dusting off some of that well-buried geometrical knowledge, I…