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$2,000 Bounty For Open Source Xbox Kinect Drivers
ptorrone writes "Open source hardware company Adafruit Industries is offering a $2,000 bounty for the first person or group to upload driver code and examples under an open source license to GitHub for the Xbox Kinect released yesterday. The Kinect sensor outputs video at a frame rate of 30Hz, with the RGB video stream at 32-bit color VGA resolution (640×480 pixels), and the monochrome video stream used for depth sensing at 16-bit QVGA resolution (320×240 pixels with 65,536 levels of sensitivity). The open hardware group would like to see this camera used for education, robotics and fun outside the Xbox."
The bounty was originally $1,000, but Microsoft's dour response induced Adafruit to double it. ("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.") In addition, the Xbox 360 dashboard update that preceded Kinect's launch contains upgraded anti-piracy restrictions.
Is reverse engineering for interoperability purpose still legal ?
Jehovah be praised, Oracle was not selected
Presumably there is cryptographic authentication here that needs to be broken. Sounds like some student's differential power analysis school project is about to get a bit more lucrative... and legally risky...
This would actually be excellent for robotics! Those specs are about on par with Point Grey's Bumblebee2 stereoscopic camera (the cheapest standalone stereoscopic camera for robotics), which retails at about $3,000! It would be great to be able to make cheap robots with that kind of stereoscopic imaging power.
Tamper-resistant? You mean, they're trying to stop me from using it the way I choose. Like how the screwdriver manufacturers add elements to the steel to make it so that I can't sharpen the end and make a pin-punch from it? Jeeesh!! What arrogance.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Once you sell one to me, it's my product, morons.
What the hell, are these X-ray machines or something with radioactive material in them that would sicken the user if he opened it up?!? I had better be sure thisn't some strange dream.
Whatever happened to people selling devices to other people, so they could use them as they see fit?
Not providing drivers fro other systems, fine, whatever you like, not your responsibility. Working with law enforcement to prevent 'product tampering?
Screw you MS, really.
Is it me or is 2000$ kinda cheap to hire someone with the expertise required to extract out kinect's source?
BS.
I am not licensing this product. Your not renting it to me. I am not leasing it. I am buying it, and I'll do with it what I damn well please.
On what grounds can Microsoft even begin to claim any sort of right to restrict reverse engineering this product?
If they are hoping to invoke the DMCA for circumventing a content protection mechanism, I'd like to point out that these things are essentially a couple of cameras and a mic shoved in a plastic housing. Any content captured by these cameras is, in no uncertain terms, mine as it is me 'performing' in front of them.
Culture is more than commerce
On one hand, yes, it is a hardware. You are please to use it as you see fit.
On the other hand, the key to Kinect is not the hardware components itself, rather it is the embedded code that brings everything together, process the data, and make the whole thing work. To that end they do have right to safeguard their code and software design to keep anyone from knowing exactly what they are doing, and how they are doing.
So I think it is not wrong if someone figured it all out by themselves how to use those components or use Kinet in its entirety in other purpose besides connecting to XBox. But I would venture to guess that whoever attempts to extract the code internal to the device would be subject to legal action, and like it or not, Microsoft's litigation would be legitimate.
Hardware-wise, Kinect isn't anything particularly special - basically few mics, simple visible light webcam, two stereoscopically arranged IR ones (take out IR filter from an ordinary webcam, replace it with non-exposed part of photographic film) capturing projected light pattern, very limited tilting.
Everything very interesting and useful happens on the CPU of X360...
It's not merely a case of drivers, you'd need highly specific software anyway. Might as well use 2 inexpensive webcams.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Regardless of the business model, there is no place for this aggressive rhetoric. Microsoft needs to understand that when they sell someone a piece of hardware, it is no longer Microsoft's to control outside of allowing it on their network or not.
Good-bye
The razor and blade model works for razors and blades. Even if you want to repurpose them to slit your wrists, you have to buy the more profitable blades rather than the useless loss-leader razor.
It doesn't work so great for anything actually interesting that people might buy for reasons other than subsidizing your business model.
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Microsoft is losing money on these Kinect units
^this one is really one of those [citation needed] cases
One that hath name thou can not otter
Not true at all. Look at the hardware spesification sheets... An arm processor and 512 megs of ram? Thats more then just a webcam and a couple of mics. There is some serious potential for having a hardware device that does some onboard processing.
Back in June, a 'trusted source' reported that the Kinect cost $150 to manufacture. It seems they're selling at cost, with no profit per unit.
http://www.develop-online.net/news/35198/Source-pins-Kinect-manufacturing-costs-to-150
How can it possibly hurt Microsoft if there are customers who want to purchase and repurpose their hardware for something other than playing a game?
Which do you think is more in Microsoft’s best interests, selling a bunch of high-tech electronics in a molded plastic case for $150, or selling a piece of stamped plastic for $40?
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
This kind of situation comes up all the time in the FOSS world.
Is there some sort of guide on how to structure a reverse-engineering project to ensure it's done properly?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Okay, I honestly forgot. Did Nintendo flip out when people started developing PC drivers for the Wii remote? I don't seem to recall them raising hell over someone making drivers for their controllers (and Nintendo WOULD be the ones to do so), but Microsoft is doing that for what is effectively a couple cameras?
Demanding constant attention will only lead to attention.
MS said they dropped doing the heavy processing on Kinect itself... 1, 2, 3. What's left does at best "entry stages" of processing, which don't give you much... (especially since MS certainly keeps the juicy details of their approach secret, an approach to which entry stages are adapted).
512 megabytes of ram would sound big, yes, so I just checked - it's 512 megabits. Nothing too unexpected for a device dealing with lots of images.
And as I mentioned, the flash is 1 MiB; certainly nothing more than basic firmware.
One that hath name thou can not otter
>MS said they dropped doing the heavy processing on Kinect itself...
There is still that arm processor. It's being used for something. It could be used for something different.
> so I just checked - it's 512 megabits
Thats still too much for buffer. 512 megabits is 64 megabytes. Still more likely that it's for processing
We are arguing about symantics. my point is: This is more then just a couple webcams and a couple of mics. We could debate about the symantics till the cows come home, but at the end of the day there are no hardware solutions that quite reproduce what the kinect does. It's worth hacking.
Microsoft needs to understand that when they sell someone a piece of hardware, it is no longer Microsoft's to control outside of allowing it on their network or not.
That's just not true anymore. They've managed to pervert copyright law from the constitutional purpose of "to promote progress" to one of absolute control of anything, including ideas, anyone makes.
Who is John Galt?
Microsoft just wants me to pay for it...
Apple? They want to sell things too, but they are also control freaks that would want to make sure you are using it the way they want you to.
I don't see how you come to that conclusion, at all.
Apple is the one that doesn't really take many countermeasures against jailbreaking. They've not made a fuss about AppleTV or iPhone jailbreaking.
Now here in this same story you find a dour letter from Microsoft about misusing the Kinect. And in Windows Phone 7, you have exactly the same degree of lockdown you do with the iPhone.
I could see an argument for saying both companies are just as locked down, but to say Microsoft is substantially better just ignores what they are doing, in any space they compete in.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Apple is the only company that has locked those down in the first place. Microsoft just added a walled garden app store; historically it was pretty wide open.
Yes and "historically" Apple has computers you can open and work on easier than PC's. Nothing really matters "historically", what matters is what they are doing NOW. And in that way Microsoft is just as closed as Apple.
And comparing the AppleTV to an Xbox is a superficial comparison.
It would have been had I compared an AppleTV to an XBox. Instead I was lumping it in with other IOS devices as things Apple doesn't really do much to stop jailbreaking on.
Apple also doesn't doesn't support blue ray(sic) because Steve wants to push his online distribution model.
Apple doesn't support blu-ray in part because of the licensing, although I'm sure the aspect of selling videos through other channels comes into play as well.
Similarly, they disallow flash on their devices without valid reason.
Well actually the reason is a dramatic drop in battery life. And Apple doesn't "disallow" Flash on anything except for iOS devices - they've just stopped including it by default in some computers. Which to bring the whole thing full circle, is exactly what Microsoft does with Flash...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Its simple. This device costs a LOT less than a similar set of cameras+processing hardware from someone like PrimeSense (OEM for the kit in the Kinect). If you could use it for something other than playing games, there is suddenly a LOT less reason to buy the expensive kit.