How to run the Kinect on Ubuntu 14.04

Install OpenNI

• This is required for the kinect interface

sudo apt-get install git-core cmake freeglut3-dev pkg-config build-essential libxmu-dev libxi-dev libusb-1.0-0-dev doxygen graphviz mono-complete

• Now clone the code and set it up

$ mkdir ~/kinect
$ cd ~/kinect
$ git clone https://github.com/OpenNI/OpenNI.git

• This thing has a bizarre install scheme. Do the following:

cd OpenNI/Platform/Linux/CreateRedist/
chmod +x RedistMaker
./RedistMaker

• Now this creates some distribution. One of the two following cases should work. Else just look for a damn compiled binary, extract it and install it.
• Case 1:

$ cd Final
$ tar -xjf OpenNI-Bin-Dev-Linux*bz2
$ cd OpenNI- ...
$ sudo ./install.sh

• Case 2:

cd ../Redist/OpenNI-Bin-Dev-Linux-x64-v1.5.2.23/
sudo ./install.sh

Install SensorKinect

• Yet another library for the Kinect.. (Why can't anyone package all this into one distribution)..
• There are two versions of this. One should work.. (i.e., if you get some weird error with one, use the second one)

$ cd ~/kinect/

• Version 1 : (this one did not work for Samir)

$ git clone git://github.com/avin2/SensorKinect.git

• Version 2 : (this one worked for Samir)

$ git clone git://github.com/ph4m/SensorKinect.git

• Once you have the lib, go ahead and compile it in the same bizarre manner as OpenNI (well atleast they are consistent).

$ cd SensorKinect/Platform/Linux/CreateRedist/
$ chmod +x RedistMaker
$ ./RedistMaker

• Done compiling. Now install this.

$ cd Final
$ tar -xjf Sensor ...
$ cd Sensor ...
$ sudo ./install.sh

Set up OpenCV

• Install a bunch of related libraries.

sudo apt-get install build-essential cmake cmake-qt-gui qt5-default libvtk6-dev zlib1g-dev libjpeg-dev libwebp-dev libpng-dev libtiff5-dev libjasper-dev libopenexr-dev libgdal-dev libdc1394-22-dev libavcodec-dev libavformat-dev libswscale-dev libtheora-dev libvorbis-dev libxvidcore-dev libx264-dev yasm libfaac-dev libopencore-amrnb-dev libopencore-amrwb-dev libv4l-dev libxine-dev libtbb-dev python-dev python-tk python-numpy python3-dev python3-tk python3-numpy

• Download OpenCV
• Extract then build (note that v3 beta might be unstable; might be better to use v2..)

$ cd opencv-2 ...
$ mkdir build
$ cmake-gui ..

• Next you will need to use the gui to configure cmake flags for OpenCV
  • Note that you should check just about every option in the cmake gui list (ones that make sense of course)
  • This is annoying because OpenCV will take hours to compile and if you miss one flag, you might have to re-do everything.
• After the cmake set up, compile the code

$ make -j

• Once you are done with the build, install it

$ sudo make install