Windows Hello with the Kinect v2

Link Removed KINECT for Windows | Developer News

Kinect developer preview for Windows 10!
We are happy to announce our public preview of Kinect support for Windows 10.

This preview adds support for using Kinect with the built-in Windows.Devices.Perception APIs, and it also provides beta support for using Kinect with Link Removed.

Getting started is easy. First, make sure you already have a working Kinect for Windows V2 attached to your Windows 10 PC. The Kinect Configuration Verifier can make sure everything is functioning okay. Also, make sure your Kinect has a good view of your face - we recommend centering it as close to the top or bottom of your monitor as possible, and at least 0.5 meters from your face.

Then follow these steps to install the Kinect developer preview for Windows 10:

1. The first step is to opt-in to driver flighting. You can follow the instructions here to set up your registry by hand, or you can use the following text to create a .reg file to right-click and import the settings:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\DriverFlighting\Partner]

"TargetRing"="Drivers"

2. Next, you can use Device Manager to update to the preview version of the Kinect driver and runtime:

1. Open Device Manager (Windows key + x, then m).

2. Expand “Kinect sensor devices”.

3. Right-click on "WDF KinectSensor Interface 0".

4. Click "Update Driver Software..."

5. Click “Search automatically for updated driver software”.

6. Allow it to download and install the new driver.

7. Reboot.

Once you have the preview version of the Kinect for Windows V2 driver (version 2.1.1511.11000 or higher), you can start developing sensor apps for Windows 10 using Visual Studio 2015 with Windows developer tools. You can also set up Windows Hello to log in using your Kinect.

1. Go to “Settings->Accounts->Sign-in options”.

2. Add a PIN if you haven’t already.

3. In the Windows Hello section, click “Set up” and follow the instructions to enable Windows Hello!

That’s it! You can send us your feedback at k4w@microsoft.com.

All the info, in lots more languages!

Many of you have probably already noticed that our Kinect for Windows developer webpage has a new home under the Windows Dev Center. This is where you can go to learn about the features of the v2 sensor and the free Kinect for Windows SDK 2.0, and to get information about building Kinect-enabled Windows apps.

We will also continue to showcase solutions from our MVPs and partners on the blog. In fact, we would love to feature more of the innovative work being done by our partner community. So partners, let’s hear from you: send us an email about your solution.

The most exciting thing about this transition to the Windows Dev Center is all of our content will now be localized into 23 different languages!

>>Read the full blogpost here

Featured App: nsquared media viewer

One of our MVPs and partners, N Squared Solutions, recently published a new app to the Windows store and it has been a hit! This digital signage application is a great way to make a statement at any visible location, whether it be a building lobby or corporate event.

“Unlike existing technology, nsquared media viewer is intelligently reactive to the presence of people which means a greater potential to captivate passers-by, getting them pay attention to your content and get your brand noticed.”

For more detail check out their full blogpost.
>> Download a free demo here.

Link Removed

If you have an app you’d like us to consider featuring in our next newsletter, just shoot us an email at k4w@microsoft.com.

Other Content and Resources:

Cortana

The Kinect for Windows team wants to keep you in the loop on interesting adjacent technologies in the NUI and devices spaces. We are working on ways to give you more updates on more of these emerging solutions. In Windows 10 we have some new Cortana capabilities for devs that we thought you should know about. Get started by checking out the links below:

1. Get to know Cortana with “Cortana Overview video

2. Cortana Development for beginner: Cortana Extensibility in Universal Windows Link Removed

3. Learn more on Link Removedand Speech Platform In Link Removed

4. Check out the new Cortana page under Windows Dev Center

Channel 9

Watch, interact and take part in discussion with Microsoft employees through the different shows on Channel 9.

Microsoft Virtual Academy

Develop your skills at the MVA. It includes both online and off-line components and features systems for self-assessment on the latest Microsoft Technology.

Keep Connected

New to our mailing list? You can now browse an archive of our past newsletters through our OneDrive. Have friends that want to join? Simply have them email us at k4w@microsoft.com.

As always, you can keep up to date on the latest Kinect for Windows news by subscribing to our blog. And if you aren’t involved in our Facebook and Twitter community already, please like us and follow us today.
​

The Kinect team mailed their mailing list this morning to say that they have preview support for Kinect support in Windows 10 so I thought I’d give it a try. This post represents my first, tentative steps towards using those bits for the first time so be aware that I’m just trying to figure this out myself.

I should say that this support involves installing a preview device driver for the Kinect on Windows 10 and the details of how to do that are in the email that the Kinect team sent out to their list, I haven’t reproduced those details here so if you don’t have that mail and that driver then this won’t work for you.

I’ve got a couple of RealSense cameras and so I’ve been able to use Windows Hello for quite a while now but I wanted to try out Kinect both as a Windows Hello device but I’m also interested in another aspect of what’s going on here which I’ll come back to in a moment.

Kinect as a Windows Hello Device


The details of how to enable the preview driver for the Kinect are in the email that was sent out and it’s not too hard a thing to do but on my first attempt I found that Windows Hello wouldn’t run on the Kinect camera.

...

I struggled with this for quite a while, finally deciding that I’d try the old trick of;

1. Removing the device from device manager (leaving the driver).
2. Rebooting.
3. Reinstalling the device.

and that sorted it out for me such that I can now point the Kinect 4 Windows camera at my ugly mug and use it to log in;

Link Removed

Kinect as a Perception Device


If you’d been following along with Kinect then you’d know that there is an SDK out there which covers;

• Desktop Applications
• WinRT Applications

and that the SDK is smart in the sense that the API set across the two is pretty much identical which makes it ‘easy’ to move code between the two environments – specifically, I’ve got applications that use shared projects in order to build an app for both WPF and WinRT at the same time from the same code.

...

Hello World – What Providers Do I Have?


I wrote some ‘Hello World’ code looking at classes within Windows.Devices.Perception. I just made a blank UWP app that had access to microphone and camera and I wrote this simple user control;

...

Getting Some Data off the Camera


I thought I’d try and grab some IR frames from the camera. How might that look? It feels very much like Kinect SDK programming and I got something up and running quite quickly but I need to revisit this and have a think about;

1. The bitmap conversions.
2. The actions that occur on the dispatcher thread versus the actions that occur on other threads.

...

Update – Drawing with Win2D


Again, this is code that was quickly thrown together but I thought I would add in the NuGet package Win2D.uwp and then replace my UI with

...

Link Removed
​