Microsoft Kinect Hacked To Be MIDI controller

This is a quick demo of Ben X Tan‘s hack to use the Microsoft Kinect controller as a MIDI Controller for music.

The Microsoft Kinect for XBox 360 is a $200 web-cam style add-on that is designed to let you use your body to control video games, instead of using a controller.  The “ugly, yucky, alpha” hack lets you use gestures to trigger musical notes.

See the links below for details.

via svenisnumb:

MIDI contoller using the Kinect.
Coded in C#.net using this: http://codelaboratories.com/nui

Very hacky ugly, yucky, alpha prototype, source code available here:
http://benxtan.com/temp/pmidickinect.zip

Next project is making a version of pmidic that uses Kinect. Then, you can control Ableton Live or any other MIDI software or hardware with you limbs. Isn’t that amazing!!!

If you are interested, you should also check out:
http://pmidic.sourceforge.net/
http://benxtan.com

23 thoughts on “Microsoft Kinect Hacked To Be MIDI controller”

  4. Laser Harp Shmazer Harp. Since this thing actually gives you 3D co-ordinates you could do a realistic theramin emulation with it (with a 2D cam this pitch/volume wouldn't change as you moved away from the antenna).

  6. Once this gets a resolution boost, it could beat the theremin at its own game, because you wouldn't have to adapt your hand movements based on the weather.

  9. Ben – cool hack!

    How big of a limitation is the resolution of the camera? I was wondering if that would make it hard to play a specific note.

  10. What's the benefit of using a Kinect instead of two cameras and some code that runs on the host computer? Do you need to calibrate the Kinect or does it simply work most of the time giving you reasonable coordinates of the points of interest you want to track?

  11. No calibration required. Just works when I turn it on.
    I think its much easier having one unit rather than 2.
    As time goes, we are going to have a framework that has depth recognition, facial recognition, voice recognition, skeletal tracking of multiple people, etc.
    Very very powerful for a device that only cost me AU$167

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