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I hear a lot of good stuff about Kinect for the XBox 360.
However, my only "display" is a projector that is sitting right next to where I would be sitting/jumping. Since Kinect is basically a combination of several infrared-and-normal cameras, I would guess that a bright, hot projector would be quite a disturbance. I can not find any articles on the subject, though.

Do you know anyone who has tried this?

CyberSkull
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bastibe
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    @Jeff Atwood should know, as he has a setup like that! – Ivo Flipse Nov 21 '10 at 16:51
  • Can't you put the projector behind the Kinect? http://kotaku.com/5695107/shadow-puppets-20-+-with-kinect – Corey Nov 21 '10 at 16:59
  • @Corey: projectors are like inverse cameras. Instead of taking pictures of the surrounding world, they project pictures into the surrounding world. And like cameras, if I am to see those pictures, I should be in a similar spot as the projector. Kinect however should see me and not those pictures. So putting Kinect behind the projector is kind of pointless. – bastibe Nov 21 '10 at 17:09

4 Answers4

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Works fine in my projector setup. The projector is on a shelf about 8 feet up, the xbox is below it, and the Kinect is about 10 feet in front of these on a 3 foot stand. The 9 foot diagonal projector screen is above and behind the Kinect sensor. I have no issues other than the absurd $50 price for the powered Kinect USB extension I needed.

kinect projector room diagram

Added top-down diagram of room. Remember projector is way, way above the kinect -- 8 feet vs 3 feet.

Jeff Atwood
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    I love that diagram! – bastibe Nov 23 '10 at 09:00
  • Bigger problem for me is that you're standing in front of the projector screen. Please keep that in consideration. –  Nov 22 '11 at 01:50
  • @bud the projector is 8 feet above the ground, per the diagram. You can stand in the middle of the room easily without blocking it. – Jeff Atwood Nov 22 '11 at 20:50
  • The diagram is correct but perhaps placing the projector at an angle so you won't be shadowing your screen would work, not too much to have a bad angle, but enough for it to work –  Dec 11 '11 at 18:01
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The same question has been asked on the XBox forum. The consensus there seems to be that as long as the light from the projector isn't pointing directly at the infra-red sensor you should be OK.

There's a link to a video on Gamespot which shows a set up with projector (though I haven't got the video to load so I can't verify this).

The topic starter has reported back

Hey everyone.

Just wanted to report back that I've set everything up and it works perfectly. The only thing you have to watch for is where you stand, obviously, so that you don't interfere with the projection onto the screen.

So it looks like you should be good to go.

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ChrisF
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Unless your projector spits out a lot of light in the infrared, you shouldn't have an issue positioning the kinect facing the projector.

Distance sensing on the kinect works by projecting a field of dots in the infrared (you can actually view the field through an infrared camera, seen here), then detecting the pattern of dots with an infrared camera placed at a precise distance from the source and calculating a distance measurement with some fancy trigonometry.

Assuming your projector doesn't spit out lots of light in the infrared, it'll essentially be invisible to the sensor, despite the fact that it's very bright to you. I'm sort of speculating since I don't actually have a kinect hooked up with a projector, but if my assumptions are correct, this should work.

authenticgeek
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Actually Corey's suggestions to Paperflyer is totally valid. I have this setup in my living room. Put the Kinect behind or next to the projector and let it face the opposite direction. e.g. you can put both the project and Kinect on a coffee table between you and a wall. Your projector and you both face the wall when you play the game, while your Kinect faces away from the wall and looks at you. Of course this assumes that you have enough space left between the coffee table and you so you stay in the valid range of the depth sensor.

dellatails
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    The bigger problem is that I don't want a coffee table in the middle of the room--let alone with a projector on it. – bastibe Nov 02 '11 at 10:59