Hack Kinect, Win $2000

DIY hardware champions adafruit industries want somebody to come up with a set of open source drivers for Microsoft’s Kinect, so anyone can run the thing on all kinds of different computer systems. There’s a reward. Of $2000.

Here’s the challenge, as thrown down on adafruit’s website:

What do we (all) want?

Open source drivers for this cool USB device, the drivers and/or application can run on any operating system – but completely documented and under an open source license. To demonstrate the driver you must also write an application with one “window” showing video (640 x 480) and one window showing depth. Upload all of this to GitHub.

How get the bounty ($2,000 USD)

Anyone around the world can work on this, including Microsoft 🙂 Upload your code, examples and documentation to GitHub. First person / group to get RGB out with distance values being used wins, you’re smart – you know what would be useful for the community out there. All the code needs to be open source and/or public domain. Email us a link to the repository, we and some “other” Kinect for Xbox 360 hackers will check it out – if it’s good to go, you’ll get the $2,000 bounty!

The best part? The reward was initially only $1000, but adafruit doubled the pot when they found out Microsoft was pledging to “work closely with law enforcement and product safety groups to keep Kinect tamper-resistant”.

adafruit’s Phillip Torrone, who also runs Make magazine, told cnet “It’s amazing hardware that shouldn’t just be locked up for Xbox 360. Its ‘radar camera’ being able to get video and distance as a sensor input from commodity hardware is huge.”

“We think First Robotics could use this,” he adds. “We think educators could use this. Look at all the cool stuff people did with the Wii remote.”

Right on, Phillip. Can we double the reward again if the winner gets Kinect running in my car, so I can drive to the shops hands-free by performing The Bangles’ Walk Like An Egyptian?

Bounty offered for open-source Kinect driver [cnet]