Microsoft’s Kinect Already Hacked

We called it (not that it was hard to call): Less than a week after going on sale, Microsoft’s Kinect already appears to have been successfully hacked, as can be seen in the proof-of-concept video above and another below. But while a DIY electronics company called Adafruit Industries had placed a $2000 bounty on the code for an open-source Kinect driver, the NUI group hacker who pulled this off says he isn’t interested in the prize, and won’t be releasing the source.

Hacker AlexP:

As a research project, I took a weekend challenge of getting this awesome new Xbox Kinect device to work on Windows.

Here are the first tests of controlling the Kinect NUI Motor and reading the Accelerometer data from a PC.

Outlook looks good for other sensors (ie cameras and microphones) of the device.
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~~~~~~ Update Nov 8 ~~~~~

As promised here are some more tests with Kinect NUI Camera (Color & Depth Sensors)

Color and Depth both running @ 640×480. They both run quite good under Window 7.

Microsoft can’t be too happy about any of this. As they told CNET, “Microsoft does not condone the modification of its products … With Kinect, Microsoft built in numerous hardware and software safeguards designed to reduce the chances of product tampering. Microsoft will continue to make advances in these types of safeguards and work closely with law enforcement and product safety groups to keep Kinect tamper-resistant.”

(NUI Group via Wired, Engadget)