Follow these instructions to install the Kinect 3D Video package with standard settings. These instructions assume that you have already installed the Vrui VR Toolkit, following the simple installation instructions therein.
In the following, when asked to enter something into a terminal, each line you
are supposed to enter starts with a $ denoting the terminal's command prompt.
Do not enter that $, but enter everything that follows, and end each line by
pressing the Enter key.
Angle brackets <> in commands below are placeholders, meaning that
you have to replace everything between, and including, the angle
brackets with some text that depends on your specific circumstances. For
example, if your host has eight CPUs, instead of entering -j<number of CPUs> as part of some command, you would enter -j8.
If you are reading this, you probably have already done this. :) If
not, download the entire Kinect 3D Video package repository from
github, either by cloning the repository using git clone, or by
downloading and unpacking a zip file.
If you are unfamiliar with git and/or GitHub, you should probably go
the zip file route. On the Kinect 3D Video Package repository's main
page, click on the green "<> Code"
button, and then click on "Download ZIP" in the menu that pops up in
response. Depending on your browser settings, you may be asked where to
store the file being downloaded, or it might be stored in a default
location such as your Downloads directory. Either way, take note of
what the zip file is called, and where it is stored.
Then, once the file is completely downloaded, enter the following line into a terminal window:
$ cd ~/src
assuming that you already created the src directory according to
Vrui's installation instructions.
Then enter into the same terminal window:
$ unzip <path to downloaded zip file>
where you replace <path to downloaded zip file> with the full path to
the zip file, for example ~/Downloads/kinect-main.zip.
Finally, check for the name of your new Kinect directory by entering:
$ ls
which will list all files in the src directory, which should include
a new directory called something like kinect-main. Take note of this
name, and then enter into that directory by entering into the terminal
window:
$ cd <Kinect directory>
where you replace <Kinect directory> with the name of the directory
where you cloned/unpacked the Kinect package in the previous step, as
printed by ls.
To build the Kinect 3D Video package, enter into the same terminal window:
$ make VRUI_MAKEDIR=<Vrui build system location>
where you replace <Vrui build system location> with the location of
Vrui's build system on your host, as described in Vrui's installation
instructions. For example, your command might end up being:
$ make VRUI_MAKEDIR=/usr/local/share/Vrui-13.1/make
You can speed up the build process if your host has multiple CPUs or CPU cores. Instead of the above, enter into the same terminal:
$ make VRUI_MAKEDIR=<Vrui build system location> -j<number of cpus>
again replacing <Vrui build system location> with the location of
Vrui's build system on your host, and replacing <number of cpus> with
the number of CPUs or CPU cores on your host, say -j8 if you have
eight cores. Note that there is no space between the -j and the
number of cores.
Once make is done, check that there were no error messages. The
quickest way to check whether the Kinect 3D Video package built
successfully is to enter the make command a second time, exactly as you
entered it the first time. The easiest way to repeat a previous command
is to press the "cursor up" key until the command appears on the
command line, and then press the Enter key. If everything went well
the first time, the second command will print:
make: Nothing to be done for 'all'.
After building the Kinect 3D Video package successfully, you can install it with your existing Vrui installation by entering the following into the same terminal window:
$ sudo make VRUI_MAKEDIR=<Vrui build system location> install
which will ask you for your user account's password to install the Kinect 3D Video package in a system location, and then install it. This should be quick. After the command completes, check that there were no errors.
On Linux, additional devices such as Kinect 3D cameras are by default only accessible to administrator users. Since you will probably want to run applications that access your 3D camera from a regular user account, the Kinect 3D Video package contains a device access rule file that grants access to several common 3D camera types to regular users.
In order to install this rule file, enter the following into the same terminal window:
$ sudo make VRUI_MAKEDIR=<Vrui build system location> installudevrules
After running this command, unplug and re-plug your 3D camera(s) from your host to apply the new rules.
You can check whether the 3D camera(s) connected to your host are detected by the Kinect 3D Video package by entering into a terminal window:
$ KinectUtil list
which will list all detected and supported 3D cameras on your host. If there are no 3D cameras, there will be no output.
If you have a first-generation Kinect camera, you should download the calibration data stored in its firmware. Enter into a terminal window:
$ sudo KinectUtil getCalib <camera index>
where you replace <camera index> with the index of the
first-generation Kinect camera whose data you want to download in the
list of cameras printed by KinectUtil list. The index is zero-based,
meaning that if, for example, your first-generation Kinect camera is
the first camera in the list, you would enter:
$ sudo KinectUtil getCalib 0
The above command requires sudo, and may ask for your user account's
password, because the downloaded calibration data will be stored in the
Kinect 3D Video package's configuration directory, which is in a system
location.
If you have multiple connected first-generation Kinect cameras, you would run the same command for each of them, with their respective list indices.