Which Microsoft Kinect to use

[ekapalka]

Well... the title pretty much says it all. I'm fairly certain that the Kinect we received from FIRST was stolen, and I suddenly need one to begin learning vision processing. The Kinect for Windows is a $250 sensor (which we can only buy online), and the Kinect for 360 is $99 (which we can get anywhere). I don't know which one was in the KOP the year we got our first one. We intend to use OpenNI and OpenCV for the programming (not the Windows SDK). I'm not certain if one is better than the other, or if the Kinect for 360 includes a USB cable. Any help picking one would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

[CalTran]

I want to say that the one that came in the 2012 kit was for a 360, but the Kinect for Windows is supposed to have access to the raw streams themselves so take that as you will.

[ekapalka]

Is that considered advantageous? What exactly could an intermediate openNI - openCV programmer do with that sort of information? I was hoping to follow some of the steps found in this white paper. Thanks for your reply!

[Boe]

The one in the KOP came with an xbox game so im assuming its the 360 one.

[RufflesRidge]

The 360 one should be fine and in some cases is better supported by the open libraries. Save the extra $150 for some other project.

What you need to make sure it has is the power plug (the cable that adapts the modified USB to a standard USB + wall wart). I believe all of the standalone Kinect packages have it because of the older Xbox without the custom USB port.

[Greg McKaskle]

The kit Kinect was the XBox one. The differences I know of is that the Windows one supports a near mode which allows it to capture objects a few feet from the controller rather than the original four feet. I believe it has other features exposed in the MS driver and libraries, but it was honestly pretty confusing.

The Kinect One seems to have further advances in the distance technology. I'd expect best open driver support of the XBox version.

Greg McKaskle